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THE  FATE  OF  DIETRICH  FLADE 


187] 


THE   FATE   OF   DIETRICH    FLADE. 

By  Professor  George  L.  Burr,  Cornell  University. 

When,  just  three  hundred  years  ago,  in  the  spring  of  the 
year  1589,  it  was  whispered  abroad  in  Europe  that  no  less  a 
personage  than  Dr.  Dietrich  Flade,  of  Trier,*  city  Judge  of 
that  oldest  of  German  towns,  Dean  of  its  juristic  faculty, 
ex-Rector  of  its  university,  a  councillor  of  the  Archbishop- 
Elector  himself,  had  been  put  on  his  trial  for  witchcraft, 
men  turned  with  a  shudder  of  interest  to  watch  the  result. 
And  when,  in  mid-September  of  that  year,  there  came  the 
further  tidings  that  he  had  been  convicted  on  his  own  con- 
fession and  burned  at  the  stake,  pious  folk  everywhere  drew 
a  long  sigh  of  relief  that  at  last  a  ringleader  of  the  horrid 
crew  of  Satan  had,  spite  of  money  and  influence,  been 
brought  to  the  fate  he  deserved.  No  voice  anywhere  was 
raised  in  protest  or  in  question.  No  word  of  pity  found  its 
way  into  print. 

But  never  again,  even  in  Germany,  did  the  persecution 
strike  so  high.  Though  two  centuries  of  witch-burning  fol- 
lowed, Dietrich  Flade  remains  to  our  day  its  most  eminent 
victim  in  the  land  of  its  greatest  thoroughness.  And  in 
these  later  years  of  failing  faith  men  have  dared  to  ask 
whether  he  was,  after  all,  guilty  of  the  preternatural  crime 
laid  to  his  charge,  and  to  wonder  what  other  cause  may 
have  brought  the  accusation  which  cost  his  life.  Wide  has 
been  the  field  of  conjecture.  Was  he,  perhaps,  a  martyr 
who  brought  suspicion  on  himself  by  opposing  the  persecu- 
tion of  others  ?     Was  he  a  heretic,  whose  politic  foes  found 

'  Better  known  to  us,  though  a  German  city,  by  its  Gallicized  name  of 
Treves,  or  Treves. 

189]  3 


4  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [190 

it  easier  to  burn  him  as  a  witch  than  as  a  Protestant  ?  Was 
he  only  a  corrupt  magistrate,  for  whom  this  seemed  the 
most  convenient  method  of  impeachment  ?  Did  he  but  owe 
his  death  to  the  maHce  of  some  spiteful  criminal, — to  the 
cunning  of  some  private  foe, — to  the  greed  of  some  heir  who 
coveted  his  wealth  ?  Each  of  these  theories  might  be  sus- 
tained by  contemporary  hints,  and  either  is  but  too  sadly 
plausible  in  the  light  of  what  we  know  of  his  time ;  but  the 
scholars  who  have  thus  speculated  as  to  the  fate  of  Dietrich 
Flade  have  been  forced  to  add  that  the  one  document 
which  might  have  answered  their  question — the  minutes  of 
his  trial — has  long  been  lost  to  research.' 

That  document  lies  before  me";  and  it  is  upon  the  basis 

'  What  has  been  known  about  Flade  is,  all  told,  very  little.  Just  before 
the  middle  of  the  last  century,  Hauber,  stirred  to  curiosity  by  the  allusion  of 
Delrio,  discussed  his  fate  in  the  chapter  of  his  Bibliotheca  magica  which  has 
remained  the  main  source  for  all  later  historians  of  witchcraft ;  but,  beside 
Delrio,  Hauber  had  no  materials  save  the  bare  mention  by  the  contemporary 
Cratepolius.  Later  in  the  eighteenth  century,  the  eminent  Trier  historian  and 
Vice-Bishop,  Hontheim,  gave  to  Flade  a  foot-note  of  sympathetic  appreciation  ; 
while  the  Trier  jurist,  Neller,  on  the  other  hand,  blackened  his  fame  by  resur- 
recting for  a  student's  thesis  the  Elector's  letter  to  the  theological  faculty  (see 
page  36  below).  In  1817,  the  city  librarian,  Wyttenbach  (in  his  Versuch 
einer  Geschichte  von  Trier,  published  as  a  serial  in  the  Trierischer  Adress- 
kalender,  1810-22),  would  gladly  have  told  more  about  him  ;  but  the  records 
of  his  trial,  which  were  known  to  have  shortly  before  existed  at  Trier,  Wytten- 
bach could  not  find,  though  he  found  men  who  had  read  them.  In  iBiB,  how- 
ever, the  Echternach  antiquary,  Clotten,  produced  what  seemed  fragments  of 
them.  They  were  printed  by  Muller  (in  the  Trierisches  Wochenblatt  for  iSiS, 
Nos.  49-51),  and  were  afterward  given  to  the  city  library  at  Trier,  in  whose 
keeping  they  still  are.  When,  a  few  years  later,  the  two  last-named  historians 
(Wyttenbach  and  MtlUer)  published  their  edition  of  the  Gesta  Trevirorum, 
they  added  to  its  third  volume  (1839)  a  valuable  note  on  Flade.  The  later 
histories  of  Trier,  including  even  the  elaborate  work  of  Marx,  add  nothing  to 
our  knowledge  of  him.  The  article  upon  him,  by  Professor  Dr.  Kraus,  in  the 
Allgemeine  deutsche  Biographie  contributes,  however,  one  or  two  fresh  facts. 

*  Since  1883  it  has  been  in  the  possession  of  the  President  White  library  at 
Cornell  University.  Glancing  through  an  old-book  catalogue  issued,  late  in  1882, 
by  Albert  Cohn,  of  Berlin,  my  eye  lit  on  the  title  of  this  manuscript.  I  laid  it 
before  President  White,  who  at  once,  spite  of  an  inaccuracy  in  the  name, 
divined  that  it  was  the  trial  of  Dr.  Flade,  whose  case  he  knew  well  through 
his  researches  in  this  field.  We  ordered  it  forthwith,  and  were  overjoyed  both 
to  secure  it  and  to  find  it  what  we  had  hoped.     Of  its  earlier  fortunes  I  have 


191]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  5 

of  this  and  of  other  papers*  which  have  hitherto  escaped  the 
historians  that  I  wish  to  discuss  once  more  the  story  of  his 
life. 

For  at  least  three  generations  the  Flades  had  been  loyal 
servants  of  the  Electors  of  Trier.  Before  the  close  of  the 
fifteenth  century  Hupert  Flade  had  left  his  Luxemburg 
home  at  St.  Vith  to  enter  the  archiepiscopal  Kanzlei ;  and 
he  had  received  more  than  one  substantial  recognition  of 
his  worth  as  a  secretary  before  he  found  himself  snugly 

been  able  to  learn  only  that  it  was  for  a  time  in  the  possession  of  the  well- 
known  Coin  bookseller,  Lempertz,  who  offered  it  in  a  catalogue  of  1874. 
Whence  it  had  come  into  his  hands  he  could  in  1886  no  longer  remember.  It 
was  bought  from  him  by  a  Coin  collector,  at  the  dispersion  of  whose  library 
it  drifted  to  the  shelves  of  the  Berlin  dealer.  Wyttenbach's  words  as  to  its  loss 
are  :  "  Bis  auf  unsere  Zeiten  waren  die  Originalpapiere  dieses  Prozesses  auf- 
bewahrt  worden  ;  aber  sie  sind  entkommen,  man  weiss  nicht  wohin.  Ich  habe 
sie  nie  gelesen  ;  aber  man  sagt  mir,  dass  darin  der  Doctor  der  Zauberey  selbst 
gestandig  gewesen."  It  is  possible  that,  with  so  much  else,  they  went  astray 
during  the  French  occupation.  I  hope  to  print  the  manuscript  as  an  appendix 
to  my  forthcoming  catalogue  of  the  President  White  collection  on  witchcraft. 
It  is  a  folio,  neatly  written  in  a  Kanzlei  hand  familiar  to  the  contemporary 
records  at  Trier.  Of  its  original  126  leaves,  the  first  is  detached  and  sadly 
worn  ;  the  second  is  wholly  gone  (I  have  fortunately  been  able  to  supply  its 
contents  from  the  fragments  at  Trier),  while  ff.  105,  106  (a  part  of  Flade's 
confession — the  later  Urgicht  suggests  their  substance)  have  been  rudely  cut 
out,  their  stubs  remaining.  Else  the  document  is  complete,  beginning  with 
the  first  calling  together  of  the  court,  and  ending  with  the  execution.  The 
Clotten  fragments  (see  last  note),  still  preserved  at  Trier,  were  never  a  part  of 
it,  but  are  rather  the  original  papers  from  which  this  final  protocol  was  drawn 
up.  They  comprise  :  (i)  Most  of  the  Fath  report,  in  what  I  believe  the  hand- 
writing of  that  commissioner  ;  (2)  all  the  miscellaneous  reports  therewith  sub- 
mitted to  the  court  by  the  Elector  (see  note  on  page  32  below)  ;  (3)  the  minutes 
of  the  proceedings  connected  with  Flade's  arrest,  in  the  handwriting  of  the 
court  clerk,  Wilhelm  von  Biedborgh  ;  (4)  three  more  or  less  complete  reports 
of  the  first  examination  of  Flade,  partly  in  the  handwriting  of  Biedborgh, 
partly  in  a  Kanzlei  hand  resembling  that  of  our  own  protocol.  These  could 
not  have  been  what  Wyttenbach's  informant  had  seen,  for  they  contain  nothing 
of  Flade's  confession,  nor  indeed  of  his  trial  proper.  A  brief  account  of  our 
own  manuscript,  by  Dr.  William  H.  Carpenter,  now  of  Columbia  College,  was 
published  in  the  library  bulletin  of  Cornell  University  in  April,  1883. 

'  Of  these  the  most  important  are  :  (l)  The  annual  reports,  manuscript  and 
printed,  of  the  Trier  Jesuits  ;  (2)  the  remains  at  Trier  of  the  judicial  records 
of  the  witch-trials ;  (3)  the  significant  passages  of  Brouwer  and  of  Binsfeld. 
There  has  been,  indeed,  hitherto  no  attempt  at  investigation  of  the  case. 


6  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [192 

established  as  Cellarer,  or  Steward,  of  the  Electoral  estates 
at  Pfalzel,  on  the  Moselle,  just  below  Trier.'  His  son, 
Johann,"  the  father  of  Dietrich,  rose  to  the  responsible  posi- 
tion of  town  clerk  of  the  neighboring  city  itself. 

When  Dietrich  Flade  was  born,  or  where  he  gained  his 
education  for  the  law,  does  not  appear.  Inheriting  position 
and  wealth,  he  would  seem  to  have  early  devoted  himself  to 

'  Thus,  on  December  31,  1495,  the  Elector  "verschreibt  dem  Hupert  Flade 
eine  iahrrente  von  4  malter  frucht  und  4  ohm  wein  "  ;  on  June  25,  1499, 
he  "  giebt  seinem  kanzleischreiber  Hupert  Flade  von  St.  Vyt  und  dessen 
ehefrau  Margaretha  Kellners  von  Ellenz  anstatt  einer  weinrente  von  4  ohm, 
auf  lebenszeit  einen  wingert  zu  Fankel"  ;  and  on  June  28,  1499,  ^^  "  belehnt 
denselben  Hupert  Flad  mit  4  wingerten  zu  EUentz  "  (Goerz,  Rege^ten  d.  Erzb, 
zu  Trier).  These  last  gifts  were,  perhaps,  on  the  occasion  of  Hupert's  mar- 
riage. Both  Fankel  and  EUentz  are  on  the  Moselle,  near  Cochem,  whence  the 
deeds  of  gift  are  dated.  That  Dietrich  was  a  grandson  of  Hupert,  there  can, 
I  think,  be  little  doubt.  In  the  Neue  Zeitung  of  1594  (see  note  on  page  45 
below),  the  ill-fated  judge  is  himself  spoken  of  as  "  von  Kochheim  an  der 
Mosel."  That  Hupert  Flade  became  later  Electoral  Cellarer  at  Pfalzel,  we 
know,  on  his  own  testimony,  from  a  paper  (in  codex  1753  of  the  Stadt-Biblio- 
thek  at  Trier),  dated  "  anno  1504  more  Trev.,"  drawn  "  durch  mich  Huprech- 
ten  Flade  von  Sant  Vyt  Kelner  zu  Paltzel,"  and  signed  "  Hupt  Flade." 
That  Dietrich  Flade,  too,  held  property  at  Pfalzel  is  known  to  Dr.  Kraus  (see 
his  article  on  Flade  in  the  Allgemeine  deutsche  Biographic)  from  the  Pfalzel 
church  records. 

*  That  Johann  Flade  was  Dietrich's  father  is  assumed  without  question  by 
Wyttenbach  and  Mtiller  (in  their  note  to  the  Gesta  Trev.),  and  is  certainly 
probable.  In  a  manuscript  still  preserved  in  the  City  Library  at  Trier,  an 
account  of  "  Wie  Frantz  von  Sieckingen  den  Stifit  beschediget  und  .  .  .  diess 
Stat  Trier  belegert  haitt"  in  1522,  compiled  from  the  city  records  by  order  of 
the  Rath,  and  written  by  Johann  Flade's  own  hand,  he  speaks  of  himself  as 
'*  mech,  Johannem  Flade  vonn  Sant  Vyt  der  Stat  Trier  Secretarien."  He  still 
held  this  office  in  1556  (Hontheim,  Hist.  Trev.  Dipi.,  ii.),  but  in  1559  had 
given  place  to  a  successor  (Peter  Dronkmann). 

As  to  the  proper  spelling  of  the  name  Flade,  there  can  be  no  doubt ;  for, 
though  it  appears  under  various  disguises  (Flad,  Fladt,  Vlaet,  Fladius,  Vlae- 
tius,  Flattenus)  in  contemporary  sources,  all  the  autographs  of  the  Flades  agre,. 
in  this  form.  There  lies  before  me  an  autograph  receipt,  given  officially  by 
Dietrich  Flade,  June  28,  1587  (I  owe  it  to  the  scholarly  generosity  of  Dr.  Con- 
rad Clippers,  of  Coin),  in  which  he  signs  himself  "  Dietherich  Flade  doctor  | 
Chfl.  Tr  :  Rhat  vnd  Schultes  |  zu  Trier."  The  seal  {Petschaft)  attached  bears 
his  arms  and  the  initials  "  T.  F.  |  L.  D."  (Theodoricus  Flade,  Legum  Doctor?) 
I  have  found  among  the  documents  of  the  Trier  City  Library  only  two  bearing 
his  signature,  though  there  are  several  in  his  handwriting.  Dr.  Kraus  (in  the 
Allg.  deutsche  Biog.)  cites  two  other  signatures.     All  are  written  "  Flade." 


193]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  7 

political  life;  and  we  first  meet  him,  in  1559,  as  a  councillor 
of  Johann  VI.,  the  ablest  and  most  energetic  of  the  Electors 
of  Trier  in  that  half-century.  It  was  the  critical  time  of^the 
Protestant  attempt  to  introduce  the  Reformation  into  Trier, 
and  the  young  jurist  was  added  to  the  important  Commis- 
sion charged  with  the  suppression  of  the  disorder.'  A 
fellow-member  of  that  Commission,  the  Cathedral-Dean, 
Jacob  von  Eltz,  became  eight  years  later  the  successor  of 
Johann  VI.  on  the  archiepiscopal  throne  ;  and  it  was  prob- 
ably to  Jacob  III.,  whose  best  claim  to  the  gratitude  of  pos- 
terity lies  in  his  care  for  the  courts  of  his  province,  that 
Dietrich  Flade  owed  his  appointment  to  one  of  the  highest 
judicial  positions  in  the  land — the  headship  of  the  civil 
court  at  Trier,  which  carried  with  it  an  assessor's  seat  on  the 
bench  of  the  supreme  tribunal  of  the  Electorate  at  Coblenz.' 
And  when,  a  few  years  later,  he  was  honored  with  the  de- 
gree of  Doctor  of  the  Civil  and  of  the  Canon  Law,*  a  career 

■  "Sexto  Septembris"  fissg],  says  Brouwer  {Annates  Trev.,  ii.,  p.  389), 
"  junxere  se  Principis  legatis  Jacobus  ab  Eltz  templi  primarii  Decanus,  .  .  . 
Theodoricus  Fladius,  et  Jacobus  Henselius  jureconsulti."  (Yet,  a  little  earlier, 
Brouwer  names  the  same  "  Theodoricus  Fladius"  among  the  members  of  the 
original  Commission — a  manifest  inconsistency,  and  doubtless  an  oversight.) 

*  His  appointment  dates,  perhaps,  from  the  Elector's  " Reform atio  judicii 
scabinalis  Trevirensis"  in  April  of  1569.  In  July  of  that  year  the  edict  re- 
organizing the  Coblenz  court,  names  amon^  the  assessors  "Diederichen  Flade, 
unsern  Schultheisen  zu  Trier,  etc."  (Hontheim,  Hist.  Dipt.  Trev.,  iii.).  The 
office  brought  with  it,  too — in  Flade's  case,  at  least — the  judgeship  of  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  Cathedral  Provost  at  Trier.  Thus,  in  a  collection  of  "  Ur- 
fehden,"  etc.,  of  the  Domprobstei,  from  the  years  1581-93  (codex  1500  of  the 
Trier  Stadt-Bibliothek),  an  Urfehde  of  July  29,  1581,  is  in  his  handwriting, 
and  a  slip  of  December,  15S3,  is  addressed  to  "  d.  Em.  u.  Hochgel.  Herr 
Dietherich  Flad,  als  Schultbeiss  der  Dhom  Probsteien  zu  Trier."  Very  vivid 
becomes  his  relation  to  the  criminal  justice  of  the  city,  as  one  comes  upon  a 
note  to  him  (of  May  9,  1572)  announcing  that  the  town  council  "seiwilligh 
Iren  Em  :  wie  von  alters  den  armen  gefanghenen  menschen  mit  seiner  urgicht, 
so  ihn  Sant  Simeons  Thorn  [the  old  Roman  Porta  Nigra]  gefanghen  ligt,  zu 
lieberen  "  ;  or  when  one  finds,  appended  to  the  protocol  of  the  trial  of  the  rob- 
ber Sont^  of  Crittenach,  in  1574,  an  account  of  his  formal  surrender  by  the 
city  authorities  to  Dr.  Flade,  with  the  formulae  spoken  by  the  Stadt-Zender 
and  the  Judge,  respectively. 

^  At  some  time  between  1570  and  1573.  An  autograph  letter  of  Flade's  to  the 
Elector  (in  codex  1775  of  the  Trier  Stadt-Bibliothek),  dated  February  6,  1570 


8  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [194 

successful  and  happy  seemed  assured  to  him.  By  his 
sovereign,  at  least,  he  must  have  been  counted  a  not  un- 
worthy servant;  for  when,  in  1580,  the  decision  of  the 
Emperor  Rudolf  put  an  end  to  the  century-long  struggle  of 
the  city  for  its  civic  independence,  and  the  triumphant 
Elector  reorganized  the  government  of  the  town,  the 
jurisdiction  of  the  city  court  was  greatly  increased  and 
Dietrich  Flade  remained  at  its  head,  receiving  in  virtue  of 
his  office  not  only  an  important  seat  in  the  newly  framed 
town  council,  but  becoming  the  Vice-Governor  of  the 
city." 

Nor  was  his  domestic  outlook  less  bright  than  his  public 
one.  His  wife,  a  Homphaeus  of  Cochem,"  was  a  kinswoman 
of  the  great  Emmerich  humanist  of  that  name  ;  and  her 
brother,  Christoph,  a  fellow-jurisconsult  in  the  service  of  the 
Elector,  had,  though  a  layman,  been  for  a  time  entrusted 
with  the  weighty  duties  of  the  Ofificialate  at  Trier,  while 
another  brother,  Peter,  was   Dean   at    Pfalzel.*     His   own 


("  1569  more  Trev."),  shows  that  he  had  not  then  the  title  ;  while  a  report  (in 
the  same  codex),  of  July  2,  1573,  is  signed  by  him  as  "  Dietherich  Flade  doct : " 
The  source  of  the  degree  was,  very  probably,  the  University  of  Trier.  It  was 
not  necessarily  an  honorary  one.  Wilhelm  von  Biedborgh,  already,  in  1572, 
Flade's  colleague  as  court  clerk  (Gericktschreiber),  was  examined  Iqtc 'Cs\&  i.oc\.oT- 
ate  by  that  university  in  1588. 

'  Hontheim,  Hist.  Trev.  Dipl.,  iii. 

*  This  is  an  inference  from  his  uncleship  to  the  children  of  Christoph  Hom- 
phaeus. It  is,  of  course,  quite  as  possible  that  the  latter  married  Flade's  sister ; 
but  Flade  himself  speaks  to  the  Elector  (see  page  36  below)  of  "meiner  lieben 
haussfrauwen  solicher  ansehenlichen  freundtschafift,"  and  this  tallies  well  with 
the  Homphaei. 

'For  the  brothers  Homphaeus,  see  Hontheim,  Hist.  Trev.  Dipl.,  ii,,  pp. 
550.  553»  554.  iii-.  P-  44.  ai^d  Marx,  Geschichte  d.  Erzstifts  Trier,  ii., 
p.  494.  In  1576,  Agricius  dedicated  a  poem  to  these  two  "  durch  Gelehrsam- 
keit  ausgezeichneten  Sohnen  des  Christoph  Homphaus  zu  Cochem  "  (Marx,  ii., 
p.  511).  Peter,  the  Emmerich  teacher,  is  said  to  have  been  the  uncle  of  these 
two.  For  Flade's  relationship,  see  Flade  trial  (it  is  thus  that  I  shall  cite  the 
manuscript  described  above,  p.  2),  pp.  70,  80,  130,  and  also  pp.  29,  33,  34,  of 
the  present  paper.  Christoph  Homphaeus  died  not  later  than  1587.  The 
younger  Peter  (see  p.  28  below),  who  himself  narrowly  escaped  trial  for  witch- 
craft, lived  till  1600.  Thirty  years  he  was  Dean  at  Pfalzel,  and  twice  was 
Rector  of  the  Unive  '^  ity  of  Trier. 


195]  TJie  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  9 

brother,  Dr.  Franz  Flade,  was  high  in  favor  at  Speyer/     At 
least  one  son,  too,  had  come  to  gladden  his  home.* 

But  the  storm  that  was  to  rob  him  of  fortune,  fame,  and 
life  was  already  brewing  all  along  the  horizon.  The  witch- 
trials,  which,  during  the  earlier  part  of  the  century,  had 
appeared  only  sporadically,  were  settling  here  and  there 
into  organized  persecutions.  In  the  neighboring  Lorraine, 
the  terrible  Nicolas  Remy  was  already  exercising  that  judge- 
ship, as  the  fruit  of  whose  activity  he  could  boast  a  decade 
later  of  the  condemnation  of  nine  hundred  witches  within 
fifteen  years ;  and  just  across  the  nearer  frontier  of  Luxem- 
burg, now  in  Spanish  hands,  the  fires  were  also  blazing.* 
Nay,  the  persecution  had  already,  in  1572,  invaded  the 
Electorate  itself.'     It  was  in  that  year  that,  in  the  domain 

'  See  Flade  trial,  p.  8g,  and  p.  29  below.  He,  too,  at  the  beginning  of  his 
career,  had  served  the  Elector  of  Trier;  at  least,  a  "Dr.  Franz  Fladt"  is 
mentioned  (by  Marx,  i.,  p.  377,  citing  v.  Stramberg's  Moselthat)  as  taking 
part,  on  December  i,  1566,  in  the  forcible  re-establishment  of  Catholicism  at 
CrOff,  in  the  "Croverreich." 

*  Flade  trial,  p.  38. 

'  Remy's  book,  on  whose  title-page  this  boast  is  made,  was,  indeed,  not 
printed  till  1595  ;  but  he  cites  no  cases  later  than  1591.  He  mentions  none,  it 
is  true,  earlier  than  1581  ;  but  he  expressly  tells  us  in  his  preface  that  not  till 
he  had  been  five  years  active  as  a  witch-destroyer  did  he  begin  taking  notes  for 
his  book.  Of  at  least  one  Luxemburg  trial,  of  1580,  a  fragment  remains  at 
Trier.  It  must  be  remembered  that  both  Lorraine  and  Luxemburg  were  in 
the  archdiocese  of  Trier.  In  Alsatia  the  persecution  had  been  raging  since 
1570.  In  the  Lutheran  county  of  Sponheim,  lying  just  east  of  Trier,  and  cut- 
ting the  Electorate  nearly  in  two,  we  hear,  in  1573,  of  several  witches  impris- 
oned and  tortured  at  the  Wartelstein,  near  Kirn  ;  and,  in  1574,  of  one  at 
Castellaun.  (See  Back,  Die  evangeliscke  Kirche  zwischen  Rhein,  Mosel  u. 
Nahe,  iii.,  pp.  249,  250,  352.) 

*  It  is,  of  course,  not  my  purpose  here  to  narrate  the  history  of  the  witch- 
persecution  at  Trier,  save  in  so  far  as  is  necessary  to  explain  the  fate  of  Flade. 
I  have,  indeed,  long  hoped  to  devote  a  study  to  that  episode,  which  has  seemed 
to  me  of  an  importance  quite  unique  in  the  history  of  witchcraft ;  and  during 
two  stays  abroad,  in  1884-86  and  1888,  I  was  able  to  gather  for  its  illustration 
not  a  little  which  has  been  of  incidental  value  to  the  present  study.  Beside 
parts  of  the  minutes  of  three  or  four  of  the  trials,  all  that  has  been  published 
upon  it  is  :  (l)  a  little  pamphlet,  printed  in  1830  by  the  Trier  antiquary,  M.  F. 
J.  Miiller,  under  the  title  of  Kleiner  Beitrag  zur  Geschichte  des  Hexenwesens 
im  XVI.  Jahrhundert,  which  is  an  account  of  only  a  single  manuscript 
source  (the  St.  Maximin  witch-register — see  note  on  page  20  below)  ;  (2)  a 


lo  George  L.  Burr  s  Paper.  [196 

of  the  abbey  of  St.  Maximin,  whose  long  contest  against 
the  temporal  jurisdiction  of  the  Elector  had  been  closed  by 
an  imperial  decision  in  1570,  a  poor  creature  named  Eva, 
from  the  village  of  Kenn,  imprisoned  and  convicted  on  a 
charge  of  child-murder,  was  dragged  from  her  cell  and,  in 
the  absence  of  the  magistrate,  tortured  further  into  a  con- 
fession of  witchcraft.  Two  old  women  implicated  by  her 
went  with  her  to  the  stake ;  and  two  more  victims  of  her 
accusations  were  still  under  the  torture  when  our  record  of 
the  episode  breaks  off.' 

magazine  series  (with  a  running  appendix  of  witch-trials),  by  the  Coblenz 
jurist,  A.  F.  J.  Liel,  on  Die  Verfolgung  der  Zauberer  und  Hexen  in  dem  Kur- 
fiirstenthume  Trier  (in  the  Archiv  fiir  Rheinische  Geschichie,  i.,  1833),  which 
unfortunately  broke  off  with  a  mere  introduction  ;  and  (3)  the  little  contribution 
of  Dr.  Hennen,  to  be  mentioned  in  my  next  note. 

'  For  the  details  of  this  episode,  see  the  little  pamphlet  published  by  Dr. 
Gerhard  Hennen,  in  1887  :  Ein  Hexenprozess  aus  der  Umgegend  von  Trier 
aus  dem  yahre  1J72.  There  is  every  internal  evidence  that  the  case  of  Eva 
of  Kenn  was  the  first  witch-trial  in  its  region.  The  prime  mover  in  the  out- 
rage I  believe  to  have  been  Peter  Omsdorf,  notary  of  the  ecclesiastical  court  at 
Trier,  whose  acquaintance  we  shall  make  later  (see  p.  29  below).  It  was  he 
who,  in  the  absence  of  both  Amtmann  and  Schultheiss,  took  down  Eva's  first 
examination  for  witchcraft.  The  man  implicated  by  her  confession  as  to  her 
child,  sent  a  friend  to  prefer  this  charge  against  her:  "  darauff  ist  die  Arme 
Person  herauss  genommen  und  daruberin  gegenwurtigkeitt  Meiers  und  zweyer 
Schoffen  auch  dess  Ernhafften  Petri  Ombsdorff  Notarien  in  meinem  abwesen 
verhortt  worden."  What  power  belonged  to  the  notaries  in  these  rural  courts 
may  be  gathered  from  the  words  of  a  Trier  jurist  (Nicolaus  Hontheim,  De  arte 
Notariatus,  cited  by  Marx,  Geschichte  d.  Erzstifts  Trier,  ii.,  p.  86)  of  the  be- 
ginning of  the  following  century,  who  says  that  "  dasei  es  denn  vorgekommen, 
dass,  wenn  Angeklagte  auf  die  Folter  gebracht  worden,  die  Richter  im  Wirths- 
hause  bei  Tische  gesessen  batten,  wahrend  Der,  welcher  den  Schreiber  machen 
und  das  ProtokoU  fuhren  sollte,  die  Fragen  an  den  Angeklagten  gestellt,  die 
Folter  gesteigert,  mit  Stacheln  den  Inquisiten  gestochen,  Streiche  ihm  versetzt, 
brennende  Fackeln  an  ihn  gehalten  und  den  Scharf richter  gemacht  habe." 
The  record,  in  Omsdorf's  own  handwriting,  is  inserted  at  the  end  of  a  collec- 
tion of  the  Scheffen-Weisheiten,  or  common-law  maxims,  of  the  villages  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  St.  Maximin,  made  (doubtless  in  pursuance  of  the  subordina- 
tion of  the  abbey  by  the  imperial  decision  of  1570)  by  the  hand  of  Wilhelm 
von  Biedborgh,  court  clerk  at  Trier.  The  volume  containing  it  was,  when  I  first 
used  it  (in  1885),  still  the  property  of  a  village  wife  at  Fell  ;  but  it  is  now  in 
the  hands  of  an  eminent  professor  (Dr.  Reuss,  of  the  theological  seminary  at 
Trier),  to  whose  courtesy  I  owe  the  privilege  of  a  re-examination.  There  is 
much  in  the  trial  of  Eva  of  Kenn  to  mark  it  as  the  earliest  in  its  series  ;  and 


1 97]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  1 1 

Of  this  occurrence  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
city  court,  a  dozen  miles  away,  had  any  official  cognizance  ; 
and  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  in  the  new  code  for  the 
government  of  the  town  the  crime  of  witchcraft  is  not  so 
much  as  mentioned.'  The  prime  source  of  the  epidemics 
of  witch-persecution  was,  however,  not  forgotten  :  the  tor- 
ture was  amply  provided  for.*  And  it  was  not  long  before 
a  chance  for  its  use  presented  itself. 

Yet  not  under  the  administration  of  Archbishop  Jacob 
III.;  that  prelate  passed  away  in  1581.  Again  it  was  a 
colleague  and  associate  of  Dietrich  Flade  who  succeeded  to 
the  See — Johann  von  Schonenburg,  Provost  of  the  Cathe- 
dral and,  since  the  reorganization  of  the  city.  Governor  of 
Trier.  Of  noble  birth,  like  all  his  brother  canons  at  Trier, 
and,  like  most  of  them,  not  yet  in  priestly  orders,  Johann 
VII.  was  yet  in  person  and  in  bearing  the  very  type  of  the 
parish  priest.  His  piety  is  lauded  by  all  his  biographers ; 
and  no  one  who  has  studied  for  a  moment  his  pinched  face, 
as  portrayed  for  us  by  the  art  of  his  contemporaries — the 
thin  lips,  the  straight,  sharp  nose,  the  feeble  beard  straggling 
over  lips  and  chin,  the  tense  lines  of  cheek  and  brow,  the 
soured  expression — a  face  that  bespeaks  not  more  the  sick 
man  than  the  bigot — will  doubt  the  truth  of  their  verdict.* 

that  the  persecution  at  this  time  went  little,  if  any,  further,  is  rendered  probable 
by  the  fact  that  no  other  witches  than  these  are  mentioned  in  the  extant  con- 
fessions of  the  later  witches  of  the  region. 

'  Various  other  crimes  are  named.  The  code  {^Reformatio  senatus  et 
ordinatio  civitatis  Trevirensis,  1580)  may  be  foand  in  Hontheim,  Hist.  Trev. 
Dipl.,  iii. 

*  I.  e.,  it  was  provided  that  torture  should  be  used,  according  to  the  provisions 
of  the  imperial  code  of  Charles  V.  It  ought,  in  justice,  to  be  added  that, 
while  the  Kursdchsische  Kriminalordnung  {1572)  of  Lutheran  Saxony  and 
the  Kurpfdhisches  Landrecht  (1582)  of  the  Calvinist  Palatinate,  with  the 
lesser  Protestant  codes  based  upon  them,  went  beyond  the  Carolina  in  making 
witchcraft,  even  without  material  injury,  a  capital  crime  when  it  involved 
dealings  with  the  Devil,  Catholic  Trier,  spite  of  clerical  and  Jesuit  influences, 
was  from  first  to  last,  as  to  witchcraft,  content  to  abide  by  the  Caroline  code. 

*  These  traits  are  especially  noticeable  in  the  portrait  of  him  which  hangs  in 
the  great  hall  of  the  Electoral  palace  at  Coblenz  ;  less  so,  in  the  face  of  the 
kneeling  figure  on  his  tomb  in  the  cathedral  at  Trier,  which,  made  after  his 
death,  I  suspect  to  be  much  idealized.     Somewhat  more  flattering,  too,  is  a 


12  George  L.  Burr's  Paper.  [198 

Already  past  the  meridian  of  life,'  he  was  fast  breaking 
beneath  the  painful  diseases  which  were  soon  to  make  him 
a  chronic  invalid.  His  election  to  the  Archbishopric  he 
perhaps  owed  to  his  affection  for  that  enthusiastic  body  of 
men  which,  at  Trier  as  throughout  Europe,  in  pulpit  and 
confessional  and  professor's  chair,  had  for  twenty  years  past 
been  turning  the  world  upside  down — the  Jesuits.  To  them 
his  predecessor  had  been  devoted,  and  to  them  through- 
out his  life  Johann  VII.  turned,  with  a  fondness  chronicled 
alike  by  themselves  and  by  their  foes,  and  attested  by  a 
lavish  generosity  in  strange  contrast  with  the  misery  of  his 
people." 

Who  can  wonder,  then,  that  the  first  work  of  his  reign 
was  the  rooting  out  of  what  was  left  of  Protestantism  at 
Trier?  A  few  stubborn  heretics  were  banished,  the  rest 
converted,  at  least  nominally — their  confessors  could  be 
trusted  to  complete  the  work.  Then  followed  the  banish- 
ment of  the  Jews  from  the  whole  Electorate.  What  re- 
mained but  the  extirpation  of  those  subtlest  servants  of 
Satan — the  witches  ? 

In  this  third  task  another  prelate  was  to  have  a  more 
famous  share  than  Johann  himself.  This  was  the  Vice- 
Bishop  (Weihbischof)  of  Trier,  Peter  Binsfeld.  For  long, 
since  the  Archbishop-Electors  had  become  scarcely  more 
than  lay  princes,  the  more  purely  ecclesiastical   functions 

gold  medal  of  him,  "set.  62,"  in  the  museum  of  Trier.  More  like  the  Coblenz 
painting  in  expression  are  the  engraving  in  Khevenhiller,  Ad  annales  Ferdi- 
nandei,  and  that  upon  the  map  of  his  electorate  in  Quad's  Fasciculus  geographi- 
cus  (Coin,  1608). 

'  As  to  the  date  of  his  birth,  authorities  differ,  varying  from  1525  to  1531. 
The  inscription  on  his  monument  makes  him  seventy-four  at  his  death  in  1599. 

'  See  Linden  (in  the  Gesta  Trev.)  and  'BrovLVfcr passim  ;  also  Reiffenberg, 
Hist.  Soc,  yesuad  Rhenum  Infer.,  i.  Say  the  Jesuit  Litterce  annua  of  1581  : 
"Joannes  Schonebergh  Praepositus,  nostrae  Societatis  amantissimus,  in  de- 
mortui  locum  sulTectus  est."  Trier  had  long  ceased  to  be  the  residence  of  the 
Electors  ;  and,  as  Johann's  health  failed,  he  withdrew  more  and  more  even 
from  Coblenz  and  dwelt  with  his  clerical  household  in  remote  castles  or  abbeys, 
such  as  Grimburg  and  Prlim.  It  is  a  strange  and  notable  fact  that  the  private 
physician  of  Johann,  from  his  accession  to  the  physician's  death  in  1591,  was 
Heinrich  Weyer,  a  son  of  Dr.  Johann  Weyer,  the  first  great  assailant  of  the 
witch-persecution. 


199]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  13 

of  their  office  and  the  general  management  of  church  affairs 
had  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the  Vice-Bishop,  whose  dignity 
the  Pope  was  wont  to  heighten  by  conferring  on  him  a 
titular  bishopric  in  partibus  infidelium.  Peter  Binsfeld, 
Bishop  of  Azotus  and  Vice-Bishop  of  Trier,  though  born  in 
the  diocese,'  had  distinguished  himself  as  a  zealous  pupil  at 
the  Jesuit  college  for  his  countrymen  at  Rome,  where  he 
had  won  the  master's  degree  in  theology,  and  had  come 
back  with  a  papal  commendation  to  a  position  in  the  Elec- 
tor's gift.  Having  won  himself  favor  by  the  relentless 
vigor  with  which  he  purged  from  heresy  and  insubordina- 
tion the  historic  abbey  of  Priim,  he  was  in  1580  raised  to 
the  vice-bishopric.  Active,  disputatious,  pedantic,  a  master 
of  the  scholastic  logic  of  the  day,  as  well  as  of  a  facile  Latin 
style,  and,  as  became  his  Jesuit  training,  devoted  to  the 
mediaeval  dogmas  of  his  church  and  to  the  order  from  which 
he  had  learned  them,  he  became  a  pillar  of  the  faith  at  Trier 
in  every  field  of  thought;  and  from  his  pen,  in  1589,  came 
that  learned  defence  of  the  credibility  of  the  witch-con- 
fessions which  for  a  century  played  the  part  of  a  code  to 
the  witch-persecutors  of  Germany,  Protestant  as  well  as 
Catholic' 

*  Two  seemingly  contradictory  accounts  are  given  of  his  origin  :  one,  that  he 
was  born  *'  ex  spectata  gente  sub  archidiocesi  Treverica  "  (from  the  Luxemburg 
village  of  Bollendorf ,  say  some) ;  the  other,  that  Abbot  Johann  VIII.  of  Himme- 
rode,  "  Petrum  Binsfeldium,  observata  latentis  ingenii  indola,  a  stabulo  et 
domesticis  Himmerodii  servitiis  ad  Musarum  castra  traduxit."  Both  stories  may 
be  found  in  the  Metrop.  Eccl.  Trev.  of  Brouwer  and  Masen  (i.,  p.  69;  ii., 
p.  131).  Dr.  Kraus  (in  the  Allg.  deutsche  Biog.)  follows  the  latter  ;  but  Hont- 
heim  adopts  the  former,  and  Dr.  Binsfeld,  Gymnasial-Director  at  Coblenz,  a 
descendant  of  the  Bishop's  brother,  has  told  me  that  he  has  a  genealogy  of  his 
family  establishing  the  truth  of  this  theory. 

*  His  Tractatus  de  confessionibus  malejicorutn  et  sagarum,  Trier,  1589, 
bearing  on  its  title-page  the  significant  motto  :  "  Maleficos  non  patieris  vivere." 
Revised  and  enlarged  by  the  author,  it  was  reprinted  in  1591,  with  the  addition 
of  a  commentary  on  the  Roman  law's  chapter  De  maUficis  et  mathematicis. 
Again  revised,  the  double  work  reappeared  in  1596  ;  and  after  the  author's 
death  it  was  reprinted  in  1605,  with  his  collected  works  in  1611,  and  finally  in 
1623.  Twice  it  was  translated  into  German — at  Trier  in  1590,  and  at  Munich 
in  1 591 — not  to  mention  sundry  works  which  are  scarcely  more  than  para- 
phrases of  it. 


14  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [200 

Yet  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  in  the  beginning  of 
the  witch-trials  at  Trier  either  the  Archbishop  or  his  suf- 
fragan had  any  part.  The  election  of  Johann  von  Schonen- 
burg  left  his  deputy,  Dietrich  Flade,  for  a  time  Acting 
Governor  of  the  city.  It  was  during  his  incumbency  of  this 
office  as  well  as  that  of  Judge  that  there  took  place  what 
there  is  reason  to  believe  the  first  trial  for  witchcraft  at 
Trier.'  Not  from  the  side  of  Zell  did  the  accusation  come, 
but  from  Saarburg,  a  score  of  miles  in  the  opposite  direc- 
tion. In  the  summer  of  1582  the  hue  and  cry  was  there 
under  full  headway.*  Witches  had  already  been  burned, 
and  on  June  7th  an  "extract"  from  the  confession  of  one 
of  these  was  officially  forwarded  to  the  court  at  Trier, 
accompanied  by  a  letter  from  the  magistrate  at  Saarburg  to 
the  authorities  of  the  city.'  It  was  a  charge  of  complicity 
against  one  Braun  Greth  (Margarethe  Braun  ?  *),  a  matron  of 
Trier.  After  an  interval  of  more  than  a  month,  devoted  per- 
haps to  the  gathering  of  further  evidence,  Braun  Greth  was 
arrested  and  put  on  her  trial.  Under  the  torture  the  poor 
woman  confessed  to  sad  shortcomings,  but  persistently  pro. 
tested  her  innocence  of  witchcraft.  Again  and  again  fresh 
evidence  warranted  fresh  torture,  and  the  trial  dragged  on 
through  three  whole  months.  But  when,  on  the  sixth  ap- 
plication of  the  torture,  nothing  worse  could  be  wrung  from 
her  than  that  she  was  indeed  a  poor  sinner  and  had  some- 
times eaten  broth  on  a  fast-day,  her  judges  must  have  been 
satisfied.     She  had  herself  naively  offered  her  tormentors  to 

*  We  read,  it  is  true,  in  the  Jesuit  Litterce  annua  of  1577,  the  significant 
sentence  :  "  Nee  veneficis  ad  suppliciura  productis  opera  defuit."  But  this 
may  easily  have  been  at  Saarburg  ;  for  the  activity  of  the  fathers,  as  we  shall 
have  occasion  to  note,  was  by  no  means  confined  to  the  city. 

*  A  Saarburg  woman,  named  Falcken  Greth,  had  been  accused  by  Eva  of 
Kenn  in  1572.  But  the  persecution  may  have  crept  down  the  Saar  from 
Lorraine. 

*  The  Saarburg  magistrate.  Dr.  Quad  von  Landskron,  was  a  man  of  birth 
and  influence,  later  (1588-1600)  Cathedral  Provost  and  Chor-Bischof  at  Trier, 
where  we  shall  meet  him  soon.  He  was  a  nephew  of  Archbishop  Johann  VI. 
and  uterine  brother  of  Lothar  von  Mettemich,  who  was  to  succeed  Johann  VII. 
in  1599  (Brouwer  and  Masen,  Metrop.  Eccl.  Trev.,  i.,  157). 

*  It  is,  of  course,  doubtful  whether  this  ought  to  be  taken  as  a  surname. 


20 1 ]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  15 

go  into  exile  and  never  again — German  fortitude  could  no 
further  go — to  lie  upon  a  feather-bed  ;  and,  as  she  does  not 
reappear  in  later  records,  it  is  highly  probable  that  her 
acquittal  was  followed  by  her  banishment.  Judge  Flade 
had,  as  the  law  required,  personally  conducted  her  examina- 
tions ;  and,  though  there  is  little  in  the  record  to  suggest  con- 
scientious scruples  on  his  part,  the  stout  denials  of  Braun 
Greth  in  the  face  of  the  most  damning  evidence  may  well 
have  set  him  thinking.'  Of  no  other  witch-trial  under  his 
presidency  have  the  minutes  come  down  to  us,  and  for  more 
than  three  years  we  hear  of  no  other  case  at  Trier  itself. 

Meanwhile  through  all  the  country-side  the  superstition 
grew  apace.  There  was  enough  to  make  the  peasant  think 
the  weather  bewitched.  During  the  whole  eighteen  years 
of  Johann's  reign  there  were  only  two  tolerable  harvests. 
To  add  to  the  distress,  troopers  from  the  seething  religious 
war  in  the  neighboring  Netherlands  came  ravaging  over  the 
border,  the  Spaniards  not  less  than  their  Protestant  foes. 
The  lower  Rhine  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Dutch,  who  cut 
off  the  supplies  which  might  have  found  their  way  up  the 
river,  and  especially  the  fish  so  necessary  to  the  long  and 
frequent  fasts  of  a  Catholic  land.  Robbers,  too,  beset  all 
the  highways  and  only  laughed  at  the  feeble  police  of  the 
prince  whom  they  nicknamed  '*  Johann  the  Sickly."  Prayers 
and   processions   seemed    of    no   avail.      In   vain    did   the 

'  The  exceedingly  interesting  minutes  of  the  trial  of  Braun  Greth — all,  save 
the  Saarburg  extract,  in  the  crabbed  autograph  of  the  court  clerk,  Wilhelm 
von  Bitburg  (or  "  Wilhelm  von  Biedborgh,"  as  he  always  writes  his  own  name) 
— are  still  preserved  at  Trier  (in  codex  1583  of  the  Stadt-Bibliothek).  They 
break  off  at  the  close  of  her  sixth  examination,  and  are  perhaps  incomplete. 
There  is  nowhere  in  them  intimation  of  earlier  trials  at  Trier,  and  there  is 
much  to  suggest  the  court's  want  of  practice  in  such  cases.  We  hear,  in  the 
proceedings  against  Braun  Greth,  of  the  trial  and  confession  of  a  Margaret  of 
Lenningen,  who  had  certainly  been  at  one  time  a  woman  of  Trier  ;  but,  had 
she  been  tried  at  Trier,  it  is  unintelligible  that  she  was  not  confronted  with 
Greth,  whom  she  had  accused.  It  is  more  likely  that  her  case  belonged  to 
one  of  the  rural  jurisdictions,  or  perhaps  to  Lenningen  itself,  a  Luxemburg 
village.  That  Greth's  daughter,  though  also  accused  by  the  Saarburg  witch, 
was  not  indicted,  is  clear  from  the  minutes  of  her  mother's  trial ;  and  there  is 
no  ground  for  supposing  that  the  persecution  went  further  at  Trier. 


1 6  George  L.  Burrs  Paper,  [202 

Archbishop  in  the  spring  of  1585  display  for  three  days  at 
Trier  to  his  despairing  subjects  the  Holy  Coat  of  Christ : 
the  mice  damaged  the  grain-fields,  the  rain  nearly  ruined 
the  vintage,  the  Rhine  was  again  blockaded.  What  wonder 
that  men  were  bitter  against  those  to  whose  malignity  all 
this  was  thought  to  be  due  ?  * 

And,  whatever  may  have  been  the  doubts  as  to  witch- 
craft of  the  leading  magistrate  at  Trier,  he  had  now  a  col- 
league who  was  troubled  by  none.  The  vacant  governorship 
had  been  filled  by  the  appointment  of  the  Freiherr  Johann 
Zandt  von  Merl.  Born  of  an  ancient  noble  family  of  the 
Electorate,  the  new  incumbent  was  hereditary  bailiff  of  Zell, 
and  held,  beside  his  governorship,  the  position,  half  judicial, 
half  administrative,  of  Amtmann  of  the  two  widely  sundered 
jurisdictions  of  Pfalzel  and  Grimburg." 

It  was  into  this  remote  district  of  Grimburg,  lying  on  the 
farther  slopes  of  the  Hochwald,  and  adjoining  the  juris- 
diction of  Saarburg,  that  the  witch-persecution  seems  next 
to  have  found  its  way. 

"  Often,"  write  the  Jesuits  of  Trier  in  their  report  for  1585,' 
"  have  our  priests  been  summoned  to  the  witches,  whose 

'  The  best  account  of  the  hardships  of  this  time  is  that  of  Mechtel  (in  his 
Chronicon  Limburgense,  printed  in  Hontheim's  Prodromus — the  original  is 
at  Trier),  a  native  of  Pfalzel,  who,  though  writing  on  the  Lahn,  had  heart 
and  pen  for  all  that  concerned  his  home.  With  him  Linden  and  Brouwer 
fuUy  concur. 

*  As  "Johann  Zandt  von  Merl,  Erbvogt  [zu  Zell]  im  Hamme,  churfOrst- 
licher  Stadthalter  zu  Trier,  Rath  und  Amtmann  zu  Pfalzel  und  Grimburg," 
he  appears  in  the  official  documents  of  the  time.  Such  grouping  of  jurisdictions 
was  common.  1584  was  perhaps  the  year  of  his  appointment  to  all  three  ;  for 
Mechtel  (Chron.  Limburg.,  s.  a.  1395)  speaks  of  him  as  "anno  Domini  1585. 
nobilis  Joannes  Zandt  i  Merl,  satrapa  in  Palatiolo  noviter  constitutus,"  and 
Zandt  himself  said  in  1591  to  Nicolas  Fiedler  (I  quote  from  the  MS.  of  his 
trial)  "  Ir  mir  jetzt  im  achten  jahr,  dass  ich  im  dienst  der  Statthaltereyen, 
vleissigh  beigestandenn." 

'  These  Litterce  annua,  sent  up  yearly  from  each  Jesuit  college  to  the 
Provincial,  were  later  (sometimes  after  an  interval  of  several  years)  gathered 
up  into  volumes  and  printed  for  circulation  in  the  order.  Dealing  mainly  with 
the  pastoral  and  missionary  activity  of  the  society  and  abounding  in  anecdote, 
they  are  full  of  interest  for  the  history  of  the  civilization  of  their  time.  It  is 
from  these  that  the  great  Jesuit  advocate  of  witch-persecution,  Delrio,  largely 


203]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  ly 

number  here  is  very  great,  and  have  attended  them  even  to 
the  place  of  punishment ;  and  through  God's  goodness  it 
has  been  brought  about  that  with  great  grief  for  their  sins 
they  have  died  piously  even  amid  the  torments  of  the 
flames."  And  they  add  an  anecdote  which  not  only  suggests 
the  whereabouts  of  their  activity,  but  for  him  who  will  read 
between  the  lines  has  a  more  direct  bearing  upon  our  story. 
"  Among  these  witches,"  goes  on  the  report,  "  there  was  one 
who  had  beguiled  by  her  arts  a  boy  of  eight,  and  was  wont 
to  take  him  to  the  place  where  at  night  they  gave  themselves 
up  to  their  devilish  doings,  in  order  that  while  they  danced 
together  he  might  beat  the  drum ;  and  he  was  often  present 
when  they  were  plotting  witchcraft  against  others.  This 
boy  the  Archbishop  ordered  to  be  brought  to  Trier,  that  he 
might  be  taught  his  catechism  by  us  (for  he  was  completely 
ignorant  of  Christian  teaching,  not  even  knowing  the  Lord's 
prayer).  And  while  our  priest  was  testing  his  mind  in  various 
ways,  he  noticed  that  the  cord  of  the  sacred  waxen  image 
of  Agnus  Dei  which  he  had  hung  about  the  boy's  neck  had 
been  twisted  and  tied  with  knots  as  if  broken.  Asking  the 
reason,  he  learned  that  the  Devil  had  visited  the  boy  in  the 
night,  had  scolded  him  sharply  for  letting  himself  be  so 
easily  won  over,  and  had  bid  him  fling  away  the  thing  hang- 
ing on  his  neck,  unless  he  wished  to  be  flogged.  The 
frightened  boy  had  done  his  bidding,  and  of  a  sudden  had 
been  snatched  away   to  the  walls  of   the  city.     There  he 

drew  the  modern  instances  in  which  his  book  is  so  rich.  Even  in  their  printed 
form,  however,  the  Littcrcz  are  excessively  rare  ;  and  they  were  never  printed 
at  all  until  1581.  But  there  is  at  Trier  in  manuscript  (codex  1619  of  the  Stadt- 
Bibliothek)  a  precious  collection  of  the  originals  for  the  Jesuit  province  of  the 
Rhine :  the  Annua  Provincics  Rheni  for  nearly  all  the  years  from  1573  to  1590. 
That  they  were  the  copies  actually  received  by  the  Provincial  at  Mainz  is  clear 
from  the  fact  that,  from  1573  to  1583,  they  are  signed  in  autograph  by  him  or 
by  his  deputy.  For  those  of  the  missing  years  (1575,  1578,  1579,  1581)  I  have 
sought  in  vain,  not  only  at  Trier,  but  at  Mainz,  Darmstadt,  Wtirzburg,  and 
elsewhere.  A  comparison  of  these  manuscript  Littera  with  the  printed  forms 
of  such  as  were  published  shows  great  variation,  but  only  in  diction  and  style — 
clearly  the  work  of  an  editor.  It  is  from  the  manuscript  Littera,  therefore,  as 
nearer  than  the  printed  ones  to  the  events  they  record,  that  I  translate  the 
passages  so  important  to  the  present  study. 


1 8  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [204 

found  a  black  goat,  and,  mounting  it,  was  borne  in  briefest 
space  to  the  wonted  spot  of  the  vile  sport  of  the  witches ; 
and,  when  all  was  at  length  over,  was  brought  back  to  the 
palace.  Many  things  the  boy  revealed  which  the  confessions 
of  witches  have  since  proved  true.  So  the  Governor  of  the 
city,  in  the  name  and  by  the  authority  of  the  Archbishop, 
asked  that  the  boy  might  be  taken  into  our  school  until  he 
should  be  properly  instructed  in  religion,  so  that  afterward, 
living  at  the  palace,  but  attending  the  sacraments  with  us,  he 
might  be  safe  from  the  wiles  of  demons  ;  and  this  was  done." 

Now,  the  Governor  of  Trier  who  showed  such  solicitude 
for  the  boy's  welfare  was  Johann  Zandt  von  Merl,  Amtmann 
of  Grimburg;  and  when,  three  years  later,  this  same  magnate 
was  asked  if  any  of  the  witches  at  Grimburg  had  testi- 
fied against  Dietrich  Flade,  he  remembered  that  a  lad, 
Jeckell  of  Reinsfeld,  who  had  been  led  astray  by  the 
witches,  and  who  had  been  brought  to  Trier  and  given  over 
to  the  Jesuit  fathers,  had  been  privately  examined  at  the 
palace  by  himself  and  the  Landhofmeister,  and  had  confessed 
that,  on  his  night-excursion  from  Trier  to  the  witch-sabbath, 
he  had  seen  there  "  certain  from  Trier."  * 

The  year  1586  saw  no  decline  of  the  persecution.  In  the 
spring  of  that  year  one  witch  at  least  was  tried  and  con- 
demned at   Trier  itself.'     Pestilence   followed    famine,  and 

*  Flade  trial,  p.  128.  The  identity  of  Jeckell  of  Reinsfeld  with  the  boy 
of  the  Jesuit  story  would  seem  unquestionable,  were  it  not  for  a  startling 
passage  in  the  Litterce  for  1587.  There,  following  the  tale  of  Matthias  of 
Weisskirch  (see  pp.  'i\-'ii^  below),  we  read:  "Alter  juvenis  simili  Sathange 
fraude  delusus  ante  triennium  nostris  traditus,  solemn!  Ecclesiae  ritu  fuerat 
liberatus ;  sed  ad  vomitum  reversus,  iterum  ab  errore  resiliit,  at  paulo  post 
miserandum  in  modum  a  sagis  agitatus  decessit."  Had  Johann  Zandt,  then, 
found  it  necessary  to  put  his  boy-accomplice  out  of  existence  ?  But,  in  1588, 
he  testified  of  Jeckell  of  Reinsfeld  that  "  der  jungh  ist  noch  im  leben  zu 
Reinssfelt  bei  seinenn  eltem."  It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  he  was  never 
produced,  though  the  Elector  himself  (Flade  trial,  p.  34)  requested  that  he  be 
brought  and  confronted  with  Flade.  The  Landhofmeister  here  mentioned 
must  have  been  that  Anton  Waldpot  von  Bassenheim  who  in  1589  was  shot 
down  by  robbers.  A  decade  later,  at  the  accession  of  Archbishop  Lothar,  we 
find  Johann  Zandt  himself  filling  that  high  post. 

'  One  "  Barbell  von  Nittell  weyssgerberss  zu  Trier,  sogefangen,"  is  accused 
in  May,  1586,  by  a  witch  of  Paschel,  in  the  jurisdiction  of  Saarburg,  and  is 


205]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  19 

everywhere  men  demanded  more  summary  vengeance  on 
the  servants  of  Satan.  "  In  this  year,  and  those  next  follow- 
ing," writes  an  eye-witness,  the  Jesuit  Brouwer,  "  feminine 
duplicity  mocked  the  public  distress  by  witchcraft ;  and 
Satan  himself  trumped  up  here  another  Circe,  as  it  were, 
to  wreak  cruel  woes  on  mortals,  to  bewitch  to  death  the 
cattle,  to  ruin  the  harvests,  and  to  stir  up  tempests  by  her 
arts.  And  what  carried  the  infamy  of  the  horrible  thing  to 
the  uttermost,  was  that  both  rich  and  poor,  of  every  rank, 
age,  and  sex,  sought  a  share  in  the  accursed  crime." ' 

evidently  the  same  one  described  two  months  earlier,  by  one  of  an  adjoining 
village,  as  "Die  itzunder  zu  Trier  gefangen  ist,  sey  in  weissgerberss."  (St. 
Maximin  witch-register :  see  note  on  page  20.)  Flade  himself,  too,  mentions 
"die  hingerichtete  Barbara,"  who  had  a  daughter,  a  "  weissgerbers,"  dwelling 
in  the  Neue-Gasse  (Flade  trial,  p,  202).  That  she  and  only  she  is  named  by 
all  three  certainly  suggests  that  her  case  was  a  solitary  one  ;  and  from  even 
these  mere  mentions  it  is  evident  that  her  trial  was  a  more  protracted  one  than 
those  of  the  rural  courts. 

*  Brouwer,  Annates  7V^z/«V^«j«,  lib.  xxii.  Christoph  Brouwer  (or  Browerus, 
as  he  latinized  his  Dutch  name),  born  in  1559,  entered  the  Jesuit  order  at 
Coin  in  1580,  and  spent  some  years  at  Fulda,  where  he  rose  to  the  post  of 
Rector,  before  he  came  to  Trier  to  take  up,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Elector 
Johann,  that  history  of  the  archdiocese  which  was  to  be  the  great  work  of  his 
life.  If,  as  his  continuator  and  fellow-Jesuit  Masen  (Masenius)  tells  us,  he  had 
at  his  death  in  1617  been  at  work  upon  it  for  thirty  years,  he  must  have  arrived 
in  Trier  about  1587.  In  1593  we  find  him  Dean  of  the  "  Facultas  Artium " 
of  the  university  there.  That  Brouwer  was  a  firm  believer  in  witchcraft  and 
in  the  persecution  is  clear  enough  from  his  pages.  As,  however,  this  closing 
portion  of  Brouwer's  book  was  for  many  years  suppressed  by  the  Electoral 
censors,  and  when  suffered  to  be  printed,  in  1670,  had  undergone  the  changes 
and  additions  of  Masen,  it  might  fairly  be  asked  whether  the  important 
passages  I  have  to  cite  from  him  on  this  subject  may  not  have  been  inserted  or 
amended  by  his  editor.  Brouwer's  autograph  of  the  original,  at  Trier,  includes 
only  the  first  eleven  books,  but  a  manuscript  by  another  hand,  which  completes 
this  down  to  1599  (where  Brouwer  closed  his  work),  shows  these  passages  just 
as  they  were  afterward  printed  ;  and  there  are  at  Bonn  documents  which  leave 
no  doubt  as  to  their  genuineness.  There,  in  the  University  Library,  is  a  thin 
folio  containing  what  seems  to  be  a  part  of  a  report  of  the  censors.  Its  first 
two  leaves  are  wanting,  but  its  twenty-first  page  bears  the  caption:  '■^ Index 
eorum  qu<E  in  Annalibus  Trevirensibus  Archiepiscopis,  Pralatis,  Religiosis^ 
Clero  Diacesi  minime  laudabilia  censentur  ex  libra  decimo  nono  et  retiquis 
necdum  impressis."  Now,  among  these  "minime  laudabUia"  (which  consist 
mainly  of  too  free  utterances  regarding  sundry  dignitaries  and  religious  com- 
munities of  the  province)  are  specified  every  one  of  the  passages  on  witchcraft — 


20 


George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [206 


But  the  prestige  of  Dietrich  Flade  suffered  as  yet  no 
abatement.  He  was  already  Dean  of  the  juristic  faculty  at 
Trier,  and  in  this  year,  1586,  he  was  elected  to  the  Rector- 
ship of  the  university — the  only  layman  to  hold  that  posi- 
tion in  its  whole  history,  from  its  reorganization  in  1562  to 
its  closure  in  the  eighteenth  century. '  His  wealth  was  pro- 
verbial. '*  By  his  civic  zeal,  and  by  his  proved  loyalty  to 
his  sovereigns,"  writes  Brouwer,  the  Jesuit,  "he  had  earned 
the  judge's  position  in  the  city;  learned  both  in  public  and  . 
in  private  law,  greatly  valued  for  his  counsels,  he  had  won 
favor,  and  fame  as  well,  among  the  princes  of  the  Empire, 
and  had  gathered  to  himself  riches."  " 

Another  autumn  and  still  no  harvest.  A  plague  of  cater- 
pillars destroyed  the  vegetables  in  the  gardens.  The  winter 
came  early,  and  a  long  "  cold  snap  "  kept  the  mills  from 
grinding.  "God  graciously  turn  away  his  wrath!"  ex- 
claims the  chronicler.  But  the  spring  of  1587  crept  in  late 
and  slowly.  Men  died  of  hunger.  Much  rain  delayed  the 
crops.     The  end  of  the  world,  said  some,  will  come  in  1588.' 

Down  the  Saar  and  the  Moselle  into  the  jurisdictions  just 
outside  the  city  walls,  down  the  peaceful  valley  of  the  Ruwer 
into  the  broad  domain  of  St.  Maximin,  crept  the  persecu- 
tion. *  Would  the  Elector  never  take  the  matter  more 
sternly  in  hand  ? 

the  account  of  the  persecution,  of  the  attempt  to  bewitch  the  Elector,  of  the 
fate  of  Flade,  of  the  recantation  of  Loos.  That,  spite  of  this  censure,  they 
were  printed,  we  doubtless  owe  to  the  credulity  of  Masen  ;  but  he  was  not  their 
author. 

'  As  to  Flade's  Deanship,  see  Hontheim,  ii.,  p.  545,  and  Neller's  Conatus 
exegeticus  (A&%ctCo&A  below,  p.  36,  note).  Of  the  Rectors  two  manuscript  lists  are 
preserved  at  Trier  ;  and  the  whole  line  is  printed  by  Hontheim  at  the  end  of 
his  Hist.  Trev.  Dipl.,  ii. 

*  Brouwer,  Ann.  Trev.,  lib.  xxii. 

*  Mechtel,  as  above. 

*  That  we  can  trace  this  step  by  step,  from  village  to  village,  we  owe  to  one 
of  the  most  remarkable  relics  of  the  witch  persecution  ;  the  manuscript  which 
I  have  called  the  St.  Maximin  witch-register.  It  is  a  careful  record  of  all  those 
accused  of  witchcraft  by  the  witches  tried  in  the  jurisdiction  of  St.  Maximin 
from  1587  to  1594,  with  the  addition  of  all  denunciations  of  St.  Maximin 
witches  by  those  on  trial  in  neighboring  jurisdictions  (to  which  a  lively  interest 
in  the  affairs  of  the  city  led  the  compiler  to  include  also  all  accusations  of 


207]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  21 

Of  a  sudden — it  was  in  1587 — it  was  whispered  among  the 
members  of  his  household  that  an  attempt  had  been  made 
to  bewitch  the  Elector  himself.  A  boy  present  at  the 
witch-sabbath  when  the  plot  was  made,  had  confessed  the 
deed,  naming  the  very  night  when  its  execution  had  been 
attempted.  The  prelate  had  become  vulnerable  by  care- 
lessly leaving  off  at  night  a  waxen  Agnus  Dei  which  he  was 
wont  to  wear  about  his  neck ;  and,  though  the  attempt  had 
not  proved  fatal.  His  Grace  had  declared  that  on  awaking 
he  had  found  himself  so  ill  that  for  several  days  he  was  not 
free  from  the  pain.  *  Such  was  the  scant  account  permitted 
to  the  historian ;  but,  fortunately  for  the  story  of  Dietrich 
Flade,  the  Jesuit  fathers  at  Trier  thought  a  more  detailed 
narrative  of  the  occurrence  due  to  their  superior.  "  Through 
the  cunning  of  the  enemy  of  mankind,"  say  they, "after 

dwellers  in  Trier).  It  includes  thus  the  depositions  of  306  distinct  prisoners 
(Miiller,  not  noting  that  two  are  repeated,  counted  308,  which  his  printer  made 
368 — a  blunder  borrowed  by  a  host  of  later  writers),  of  whom,  however,  only 
about  270  belong  to  St.  Maximin  itself.  The  number  of  denunciations  is  a 
little  over  six  thousand  ;  but,  as  most  of  the  names  recur  again  and  again,  the 
real  number  of  the  denounced  is  not  more  than  a  fourth  or  a  fifth  of  that.  The 
authorship  of  the  volume  has  been  ascribed  to  Claudius  Musiel,  because  its  last 
pages  bear  a  superscription  stating  that  they  deal  with  the  period  when  he  was 
Amtmann  of  the  jurisdiction  ;  but,  for  reasons  which  I  will  not  here  detail,  I 
believe  its  main  author  and  user  to  have  been  Peter  Omsdorf.  That  the  book 
was  actually  in  use  as  a  source  of  accusations  admits  of  easy  proof.  From  it 
the  testimony  against  Flade  was  to  be  largely  drawn.  The  manuscript  (a  small 
quarto  of  some  600  pages)  is  now  in  the  Stadt-Bibliothek  at  Trier.  It  is  the 
main  subject  of  Miiller's  Kleiner  Beitrag  zur  Geschichte  des  Hexenwesens  men- 
tioned above  (p.  9,  note).  Its  earliest  depositions  are  of  1586,  and  belong  to 
Saarburg  villages  adjoining  those  of  St.  Maximin. 

'  So  Brouwer  tells  the  story  (Ann.  Trev.,  lib.  xxii.). 

'  LittercB  annuce  (MS.),  1587.  It  seems  to  me  best  to  give  here  the  original 
of  this  important  passage:  "  Ejusdem  hostis  versutia  et  praestigiis  deceptus 
rusticus,  sed  perspicacis  ingenii  Adolescens,  annorum  15,  ad  locum  ubi  conven- 
tus  suos  habent  sagse,  et  nefarios  choros,  commessationes  aliaque  scelera  perpe- 
trant,  aliquoties  accesserat ;  nondum  tamen  Deo  ac  Deiparae  virgini  (quod  ritu 
illorum  prasscribitur)  renuncians,  diabolicis  mysteriis  erat  initiatus  :  felis  tamen 
cerebro  in  cibum  sumpto,  proprii  cerebri  (luna  potissimum  decrescente) 
magnam  imbecillitatem  contraxerat.  Hanc  tandem  civitatem,  quam  prius 
viderat  nunquam  ingressus  (quod  non  tam  casu  factum  videtur,  quam  dsemonis 
astu,  qui  per  hunc  suos  cultores  in  discrimen  adductos  volebat)  a  Praefecto  cap- 
tus  in  Principis  Palatium  adducitur,  ut  ibidem  in  abdito  loco  servatus,  melius 


22  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [208 

speaking  as  usual  of  the  great  number  of  the  detected 
witches,  "  was  also  misled  a  certain  youth  of  fifteen  years — 
a  rustic,  but  keen  of  wit — who  went  several  times  to  the 
places  where  the  witches  have  their  meetings  and  perpetrate 
their  horrid  dances,  their  feasts,  and  the  rest  of  their  crimes. 
He  had  not,  indeed,  yet  renounced  God  and  the  virgin 
Mother  of  God  (as  is  prescribed  by  their  ritual),  and  been 
initiated  into  the  diaboHc  mysteries ;  but,  having  taken  a 
cat's  brain  at  the  feast,  he  contracted  (especially  as  it  was  in 
the  wane  of  the  moon)  a  great  imbecility  of  his  own  brain. 
He  was  at  length  arrested  by  the  Governor  and  brought  to 
this  city,  which  he  had  before  seen  but  had  never  entered  (a 
thing  seemingly  due  less  to  accident  than  to  the  artfulness 
of  the  Devil,  who  wished  his  followers  to  be  through  him 
brought  into  danger),  and  quartered  in  the  Electoral  palace, 
in  order  that,  being  kept  in  a  secluded  place,  he  might  the 

a  nostris  erudiretur,  et  malam  illam  servitutem  effugeret :  sed  cum  a  sagis  et 
daemone  noctu  vexaretur,  et  crudeliter  etiam  verberaretur,  cerea  quoque  sacrati 
agni  effigies,  quae  collo  fuerat  appensa,  divelleretur,  multisque  minis  ad  propo- 
situm  retinendum  soUicitaretur ;  ad  Collegium  nostrum  Reverendissimi  Ar- 
chiepiscopi  jussu  adductus,  ne  ibi  quidem  hac  importuna  divexatione  fuit  im- 
munis,  donee  cubiculum  in  quo  erat,  exorcismis  lustraretur,  et  benedictionibus 
ecclesise  ab  omni  dsemonis  infestatione  vindicaretur.  Post  cum  in  templo 
nostro  ritu  Catholico  exorcisatur,  constanter  oculos  in  vitream  fenestram  altari 
proximam  defigebat :  rogatus  Ecquid  videret  ?  dissimulavit,  quod  postea 
fassus  est,  se  suum  dominum  (singulis  enim  maleficis  hujusraodi  peculiaris 
praeest  daemon  quem  dominum  nuncupant)  Sambuco  pone  fenestram  illam  insi- 
dentem  vidisse,  per  fenestrae  foramen  sibi  minitantem  si  a  fcedere  secum  inito 
resiliret.  Narrabat  ille,  dum  a  quaesitore  (quod  postea  ipsi  Reverendissimo 
fassus  fuit)  examinatur,  inter  eos,  quos  indicio  suo  prodebat,  unum  fuisse,  qui 
in  conventu  gloriatus  fuerat,  se  quadam  nocte  Archiepiscopo,  cui  in  magni  mo- 
menti  officio  minister  erat,  dormienti  potionem  ingessisse,  aditu  a  Sua  Cels. 
tunc  patefacto,  quod  praeter  morem  Agnum  Dei,  quem  de  collo  gestat,  in 
mensa  cubitum  concedens,  deposuisset.  Sed  quia  materiae  non  satis  erat,  hac 
vice  mortem  evasurum.  Nee  falsa  fuit  vel  dubia  narratio.  Experrectus 
namque  Reverendissimus,  licet  rei  ignarus,  talem  invaletudinem  sensit  ;  ut  ad 
aliquot  dies  de  vita  periclitaretur,  quousque  Medicus  salutari  poculo  venenum 
malum  expulit.  Hujus  generis  alia  loquenti,  cum  non  facile  fides  haberetur, 
conversus  ad  urbis  praefectum,  Quin  et  tuae,  inquit,  vitae  bis  insidiatae  sunt,  sed 
quod  tecum  ferre  soles  vasculum  cui  duae  sunt  imagines  insculptae,  et  nescio 
quid  sacrati  (Agnum  Dei  significabat)  continet,  et  ad  lectum  tuum  appendere 
consuevisti,  hoc  illis  impedimento  fuit,  quo  minus,  quod  studebant,  perficere 
potuerint.     Quae  signa  vera  esse  Praefectus  ipse  affirmabat." 


209]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  23 

better  be  taught  by  our  priests  and  escape  his  wretched  bon- 
dage. But,  when  he  was  tormented  at  night  by  the  witches 
and  the  Devil,  and  even  cruelly  beaten,  and  when  the  waxen 
figure  of  consecrated  Agnus  Dei,  which  had  been  hung  about 
his  neck,  was  torn  off,  and  he  was  urged  with  many  threats 
to  go  on  with  what  he  had  begun,  then  by  order  of  the 
Archbishop  he  was  brought  to  our  college.  And  not  even 
there  was  he  safe  from  this  persistent  annoyance,  until  the 
bedchamber  in  which  he  was  had  been  purged  by  exorcisms, 
and  freed  from  all  molestation  of  the  Devil  by  the  benedic- 
tions of  the  Church.  Later,  when  he  was  exorcised  in  our 
sanctuary  according  to  the  Catholic  ritual,  he  kept  his  eyes 
constantly  fixed  on  the  window  nearest  the  altar;  and  when 
asked,  '  What  are  you  looking  at  ? '  he  concealed  what 
afterward  he  confessed — that  he  saw  his  master  Sambuco 
(for  in  this  way  is  given  charge  of  each  witch  a  special 
demon  whom  the  witches  call  master)  sitting  behind  that 
window  and  threatening  him  through  the  window-slit  if  he 
should  break  the  pact  he  had  made  with  himself.  When 
questioned  by  the  examiner,  the  boy  narrated  (what  after- 
ward he  confessed  to  the  Archbishop  himself)  that,  among 
those  whom  he  was  denouncing  by  his  testimony,  was  one 
who  had  boasted  at  the  witch-sabbath,  that  on  a  certain 
night  he  had  administered  to  the  sleeping  Archbishop,  in 
whose  service  he  held  an  office  of  great  importance,  a  deadly 
potion,  His  Grace  being  accessible,  because  contrary  to  his 
habit  he  had  on  going  to  bed  laid  on  the  table  the  amulet  of 
sacred  wax  which  he  wore  about  his  neck  ;  but  that,  there 
being  not  enough  of  the  drug,  the  Elector  would  this  time 
escape  death.  Nor  was  the  story  false  or  doubtful ;  for  the 
Archbishop,  on  awaking,  although  ignorant  of  the  matter, 
felt  himself  so  ill  that  for  several  days  his  life  was  in  danger, 
until  his  physician  expelled  the  dire  poison  by  a  health- 
giving  draught.  And,  when,  as  the  lad  went  on  to  tell 
other  things  of  this  sort,  it  was  not  easy  to  put  faith  in  what 
he  said,  he  turned  to  the  Governor  of  the  city  :  '  Nay,  your 
life  too,'  he  said,  '  has  been  twice  plotted  against ;  but  the 
little  locket  you  wear,  which  has  two  engraved  figures  cut  in 


24  George  L.  Burr's  Paper.  [210 

it,  and  holds  something  consecrated  (he  meant  Agnus  Dei), 
and  which  you  have  been  wont  to  hang  on  your  bed,  was  a 
hindrance  to  them,  so  that  they  could  not  carry  out  what 
they  planned.'  And  the  Governor  himself  admitted  the 
truth  of  these  statements." 

The  tale  needs  no  commentary.  To  us  it  is  full  of 
another  meaning  than  that  it  bore  to  the  robuster  faith 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  Something  less  than  magic  can 
explain  the  boy's  miraculous  knowledge  of  the  Elector's 
illness  and  of  the  Governor's  private  devotions.  The  offi- 
cial thus  accused  of  witchcraft  was  Dietrich  Flade.  "  Inas- 
much," say  the  records  of  his  trial,*  "  as  a  young  boy  named 
Matthias,  born  at  Weisskirch,  led  by  others  into  witch- 
craft, was  accused  thereof  by  other  executed  persons,  and 
was  alleged  also  to  have  been  present  at  the  witch-sabbath, 
he  was,  by  order  of  the  Governor  of  Trier,  brought  to  this 
city  in  custody ;  and,  being  examined,  did  at  once,  without 
torture,  freely  confess  that  he  had  through  the  seduction  of 
the  Devil  several  times  been  present  at  the  sabbath, — that 
there  he  had  seen  a  great  number  of  richly-clad  people,  and 
among  the  rest  two  grandees  in  showy  array.  Now  these, 
being  described  by  him  as  to  the  clothing  they  then  wore 
and  their  bodily  figure,  correspond  entirely  with  Dr.  Flade 
and  another,  both  in  their  physical  proportions  and  in  all 
other  details  ;  and  the  aforesaid  description  was  afterward 
confirmed  by  the  fact  that,  when  once  the  lad  followed 
with  others  to  see  a  criminal  flogged  out  of  the  city,  and 
Dr.  Flade  fell  under  his  eyes,  he  at  once  recognized  him, 
and  afterward  openly  declared  that  he  had  seen  the 
Meier'  of  Trier  (meaning  Dr.  Flade,  the  Judge)  at  the 
witch-sabbath,  and  had  met  him  at  the  expulsion  of  the 
criminal." 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  155-157.  Weisskirch,  like  Reinsfeld,  was  a  village  in  the 
jurisdiction  of  Grimburg.  My  translation  tries  to  follow  the  awkward  syntax 
of  the  original.  What  stress  the  Elector  himself  laid  upon  this  testimony  may 
be  seen  in  his  letter  to  the  theological  faculty  (pp.  36-38,  below). 

'  The  Meiers,  or  managers  of  the  Electoral  farms,  the  great  men  of  the 
country  villages,  played  a  large  part  in  the  witch-persecution,  both  as  accusers 
and  as  victims. 


21 1]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  25 

The  plot  that  should  cost  Dietrich  Flade  his  life  was  well 
begun.  The  all-powerful  Jesuit  fathers  were  convinced,  the 
Elector  himself  terrified.  All  was  now  ripe  for  a  formal 
denunciation  which  should  catch  the  ear  of  the  courts. 
This  came  from  the  other  jurisdiction  of  Johann  Zandt, 
from  Pfalzel.  In  the  summer  of  1587  the  persecution  was 
there  fully  under  way,'  On  the  8th  of  July  was  burned  a 
witch,  known  as  "  Maria,  the  old  Meieress,"  from  the  neigh- 
boring village  of  Ehrang,  She  had  testified,  and  without 
torture,  that  Dr.  Dietrich  Flade,  whom  she  knew  well,  had 
several  times  been  at  the  witch-sabbath.  And,  though  the 
Amtmann  himself  had  thereupon  examined  the  old  Maria 
privately,  and  exhorted  her  to  do  nobody  a  wrong,  she  had 
remained  firm  as  to  Dr.  Flade  till  her  death.  Nay,  when 
brought  before  the  open  court  for  her  sentence,  and  after- 
wards at  the  stake  before  all  the  crowd,  she  would  have  kept 
shouting  out  his  name  if  they  had  not  stopped  her.  To  this 
all  the  rural  assessors  of  the  court  later  bore  witness,' 

The  rest  was  easy.  No  witch,  casting  about  in  the  torture 
for  some  name  on  which  to  fasten  the  accusation  her  inquisi- 
tors relentlessly  demanded,  was  likely  to  forget  that  Maria 
of  Ehrang  had  accused  the  well-known  judge  of  Trier,  The 
poor  witches  of  the  country-side,  jealous  of  the  greater  ex- 
emption of  their  more  prosperous  city  neighbors,  had  long 
insisted  that  there  were  town-folk  too  at  the  witch-sabbath 
but  had  hesitated  to  mention  names.     Here  was  a  name  for 

'  "  In  oppidulo  prope  Treveros  Pfaltz  dicto,"  say  the  Annals  of  Neuss  for 
the  year  1587,  "  archiepiscopus  cremari  jussit  118  sagas,  duosque  viros,  eo 
quod  confiterentur  se  suis  incantationibus  frigus  ad  Junium  usque  commovisse  : 
et  cum  essent  igni  proximiores,  fatebantur,  si  adhuc  tres  supervixissent  dies  ante 
suam  captivitatem,  acutius  adeo  commoturas  fuisse  frigus,  ut  ne  viridis  apparu- 
isset  uspiam  ramus  :  ita  ut  et  vinese  agerque  et  silvse  hoc  anno  steriles  perman- 
sissent."  {Ann.  N'ovesienses,  in  Martene  and  Durand,  Ampl.  ColUctio,  iv., 
521-739.) 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  27,  28,  49,  116-118.  Her  life,  of  course,  was  already  for- 
feit before  this  accusation  was  made.  What  was  her  reward  for  making  it,  it 
is  not  hard  to  guess  :  it  lay  in  the  power  of  Johann  von  Zandt,  as  Amtmann, 
to  bum  her  alive  or  mercifully  to  suffer  her  first  to  be  strangled.  This  it  was, 
this  and  fear  of  a  renewal  of  the  torture,  which  kept  many  men  and  women 
"  firm  till  death  "  in  their  confessions. 


26  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [2 1 2 

them,  and  a  rich  man's  withal.  A  month  had  not  passed 
before  another  on  trial  at  Pfalzel — "  Loch  Hans,"  of  Schweich 
— repeated  the  accusation  of  Maria  of  Ehrang.* 

Johann  Zandt  was  now  ready  for  the  next  step.  "  Inas- 
much," he  said  two  years  later  to  his  colleagues  at  Trier, 
"  as  Dr.  Dietrich  Flade  was  a  man  of  ability,  learning,  and 
experience,  who  had  long  been  an  Electoral  Councillor,  was 
Judge  at  Trier,  and  had  been  Acting  Governor  of  the  city, 
had  done  the  Electorate  great  service  and  had  discharged 
many  commissions,  had  served  princes  and  counts,  men 
of  noble  birth  and  of  ignoble,"  he  would  gladly  have  seen 
him  clear  himself  of  the  charges  thus  growing  rife  against 
him.  He  had  himself  spoken  to  Dr.  Flade's  friends  and 
acquaintances  of  the  matter ;  but  he  noticed  that  none 
of  them  was  willing  to  mention  it  to  the  accused.  There- 
fore, out  of  the  goodness  of  his  heart,  he  resolved  at  last 
himself  to  tell  Dr.  Flade.  It  was  in  August  of  1587.  He 
invited  the  magistrate  into  his  garden  and  told  him  of  the 
charges  made  by  Loch  Hans.  Flade  thanked  him,  and 
asked  that  the  man  be  more  closely  questioned." 

But  the  Judge  was  too  old  a  lawyer  to  rest  his  case  with 
that.  It  was  "  general-reckoning  day  "  at  Trier ;  and  he 
immediately  drew  up  a  petition  to  the  Elector  setting  forth 
his  innocence,  and  begging  to  be  allowed  to  clear  himself 
legally  before  the  Vice-Bishop,  the  Governor,  the  Official,  or 
such  commission  as  the  Elector  might  appoint,  and  for- 
warded it  by  three  of  his  fellow-jurists  as  they  returned 
down  the  river.  Nor  did  he  stop  with  this.  At  the  first 
opportunity  he  went  himself  to  the  Elector  at  Coblenz,  and 
there,  supported  by  a  considerable  number  of  his  friends, 
defended  himself  in  detail  before  the  commission  appointed 
to  hear  him.* 

Meanwhile  Loch  Hans  had  clung  to  his  accusation  and 
been  duly  burned  * ;  and  the  Governor  had  received  instruc- 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  ii8,  1 19.  '  Flade  trial,  p.  62. 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  41,  42,  45,  46.  His  message-bearers  were  "  Johan  Beyer  der 
alt,  Johan  Beyer  der  jungh  Doctor,  unnd  Gabriell  Merli." 

*  From  the  Krdmer-Haus  at  Trier  Dr.  Flade  himself  watched  the  Governor 
ride  away  toward  Pfalzel  to  his  execution.     Flade  trial,  p.  iig. 


213]  1^^  P^t^  of  Dietrich  Flade.  2/ 

tions  from  court  that,  if  there  should  be  further  testimony 
of  the  sort,  Flade  should  be  told  the  names  of  his  accusers.' 
There  was  need  of  no  long  waiting.  The  rumor  of  his  guilt 
was  all  abroad,  and  not  only  at  Pfalzel  but  in  the  neighbor- 
ing jurisdictions  of  St.  Maximin  and  St.  PauHn  witches  in 
abundance  named  him  in  their  confessions ;  but  it  was  not 
until  the  following  spring  that  one  was  found  who  suited 
the  purpose  of  the  Governor. 

In  the  meantime  the  foes  of  the  unhappy  magistrate  were 
not  idle.  On  October  3,  1587,  the  Elector  addressed  to  his 
lay  court  at  Trier  an  edict  of  censure  well  calculated  to  un- 
dermine the  prestige  of  its  president  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world.  "Forasmuch,"  said  that  document,*  "as  for  some 
time  past  in  the  administration  of  justice  all  sorts  of  abuses 
have  been  noticed,"  His  Grace  had  been  investigating  the 
matter  and  would  presently  issue  a  revised  code  of  proce- 
dure for  the  court.  The  only  complaint  explicitly  made  was 
that  of  tardiness  of  justice ;  and  for  the  remedy  of  this  was 
prescribed  greater  promptness  at  the  sessions,  a  less  hesita- 
ting execution  of  the  sentences  of  the  ecclesiastical  court, 
and  a  more  energetic  enforcement  of  the  lay  court's  own  de- 
cisions in  civil  matters.  But  far  more  serious  were  the  sus- 
picions implied  by  the  further  requirements  that  hereafter 
"  all  money,  silverware,  or  the  like,  sequestrated  by  the 
court,  shall  be  deposited  in  the  chest  wherein  the  seal  is 
kept,  and  duplicate  keys  of  it  given  to  the  Judge  and  to  two 
Assessors,  no  one  of  whom  may  open  it  alone, — that  the 
Judge  shall  forthwith  deposit  in  the  chest  all  sequestrated 
money  now  in  his  hands, — and  that  a  special  strong-room 
shall  be  prepared  for  the  custody  of  all  property  held  in 
pledge."  And  darker  still  is  the  insinuation,  when  at  the 
end  "  His  Electoral  Grace  herewith  in  all  graciousness  cau- 
tions the  Judge  and  Assessors  that  they  keep  before  their 

'  Flade  trial,  p.  63. 

'  A  contemporary  copy  of  it  is  in  codex  1393  of  the  Stadt-Bibliothek  at 
Trier.  The  volume  of  which  it  forms  a  part  belonged  to  the  "  Churflirst- 
lich  Weltliches  Hochgericht  zu  Trier,"  itself,  and  seems  never  to  have  fallen 
under  Hontheim's  eye.  A  part  of  the  censure  edict  is  printed  by  Wyttenbach 
and  Miiller  in  the  additamenta  to  their  Gesta  Trev.,  iii. 


28  George  L.  Burr  s  Paper.  [214 

eyes  sacred  Justice,  and  suffer  themselves  not,  through  gifts 
or  any  other  of  the  means  which  sometimes  sway  a  judge's 
mind  and  give  rise  to  partiality,  to  be  drawn  aside  there- 
from." Was  Dietrich  Flade,  then,  so  lately  honored  by  all, 
a  peculator  and  a  corrupt  judge?  Or  was  this  an  attempt  to 
blacken  the  fame  of  a  man  who  must  at  all  hazards  be 
destroyed  ? 

The  Governor  was  at  last  ready  with  his  witness.  In 
April  of  1588  Margarethe  of  Euren,  on  trial  at  Pfalzel,  testi- 
fied that  Dr.  Flade  had  come  to  the  witch-sabbath  in  a 
golden  wagon.  There  he  had  urged  the  destruction  of  all 
the  crops,  but  the  poor  had  opposed  him  and  she  herself  had 
protested,  whereupon  he  had  struck  her  with  a  stick,  saying 
that  they  of  Trier  had  enough  yet ;  and  when  in  despair  she 
had  uttered  the  name  of  God,  the  whole  assembly  had  in- 
stantaneously vanished.  He  and  his  followers  had  once 
brought  on  a  terrible  hail-storm,  which  had  killed  forty-six 
cows  at  Pfalzel,  by  standing  in  the  Biewer  brook  and  pour- 
ing water  over  their  heads  in  the  name  of  a  thousand  devils ; 
and  he  had  wished  to  overturn  both  the  Pfalzel  and  the 
Euren  woods,  so  that  no  more  stakes  could  be  made  for  the 
burning  of  witches.  He  had  also  created  the  snails  which 
had  injured  the  crops — how,  he  could  himself  tell  if  asked. 
He  had  helped  dig  up  from  the  churchyard  at  Euren  a  four 
weeks'  child,  whose  heart  had  been  taken  out,  baked  in  a 
fritter,  and  shared  among  the  witches,  in  order  to  make  it 
impossible  for  them  to  confess  their  witchcraft.  She  herself 
was  indeed  confessing ;  but  she  had  eaten  only  a  little.  All 
this  and  more  with  the  most  gratifying  exactitude.' 

Again  the  Judge  was  summoned  to  an  interview  in  the 
Governor's  garden.  He  was  permitted  to  send  three  friends 
— his  kinsman,  the  Dean  at  Pfalzel  (Peter  Homphaeus),  his 
confessor  (and  hers),  the  Jesuit  Lucas  Ellentz,  and  his  col- 
league, the  Assessor  Maximin  Pergener — to  examine  the 
witch  in  his  behalf.  But,  in  spite  of  their  efforts,  she  was 
firm  to  her  death.  One  of  them  reported  to  Flade  that  "  it 
seemed  as  if  the  Devil  spoke  out  of  her."  " 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  123-127.  '  Flade  trial,  pp.  44,  45,  63. 


2 1 5]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  29 

Such  was  the  evidence,  born  of  the  torture,  on  which  in 
the  witchcraft  days  men  and  women  were  done  to  death. 
In  the  following  month  another  Pfalzel  witch  confirmed  the 
testimony  about  the  snails.'  The  case  of  Flade  was  desper- 
ate indeed. 

The  old  man's  misfortunes  had  not  come  single.  Death 
had  stripped  him  of  family  and  friends:  his  wife,  his  brother, 
his  influential  brother-in-law,  his  sister,  his  son,  all  were  gone.* 
Among  those  still  bound  to  him,  however,  was  one  colleague 
of  some  weight — Christoph  Fath,  a  prot6g6  of  his  brother 
Franz  at  Speyer,  who,  through  the  good  offices  of  Dietrich 
Flade  himself,  had  become  an  Assessor  of  his  own  court  at 
Trier,  and  had  received  in  marriage  one  of  his  kinswomen. 
Shrewd  but  cruel  was  it  when  to  Christoph  Fath,  on  July  4, 
1588,  was  sent  the  commission  to  investigate  and  report  the 
evidence  of  witchcraft  against  Dr.  Flade.  If  it  were  an  in- 
stinct of  fairness  that  suggested  the  choice,  it  was  certainly 
none  that,  on  an  enclosed  slip,  named  as  his  associate  in  the 
investigation  the  terrible  notary,  Peter  Omsdorf.*     The  dis- 

'  Flade  trial,  p.  152. 

^  Flade  trial,  pp.  38,  78,  190.  His  household  seems  at  this  time  to  have 
consisted,  beside  himself,  of  only  his  three  wards,  Johann,  Franz,  and  Maria 
Homphaeus,  probably  the  orphans  of  his  brother-in-law  Christoph. 

'  Flade  trial,  p.  85.  If  what  has  been  already  told  of  Omsdorf  does  not 
justify  this  epithet,  let  me  add  but  one  bit  of  testimony.  After  his  death  Scho 
Apollonia,  of  Kirsch,  one  of  the  few  witches  who  escaped  his  clutches,  testi- 
fied, among  other  things,  that,  as  she  was  hanging  in  the  torture  at  Zell,  she 
saw  Meyer  Huprecht,  of  Schweich  (one  of  the  accusers  of  Clasen  Adam, 
Schultheiss  at  Schweich,  and  of  his  wife  Apollonia),  slip  a  piece  of  gold  into 
Omsdorf's  hand  ;  that  Omsdorf  questioned  her  as  to  various  people  by  name, 
including  some  at  Trier,  asking  her  whether  she  had  seen  them  too  at  the 
witch-sabbath  ("  Er  Ombsdorff  habt  nitt  allein  Roders  Adamen,  sonder  auch 
andere  mehr  anderstwo,  auch  binnen  Trier,  namhafift  gemacht,  und  sie  ge- 
fragt,  Ob  sie  dieselbige  auch  auff  Hetzerather  Heyden  ahn  iren  dantz  ge- 
sehen  ?  ");  and  that,  angered,  he  had  himself  seized  the  executioner's  staff  and 
prodded  her  with  it  in  the  breast,  so  that  the  blood  flowed.  (See  the  fragments 
of  the  case  of  Clasen  Adam  and  his  wife,  in  codex  1534  of  the  Trier  Stadt- 
Bibliothek.)  Besides  being  notary  of  the  ecclesiastical  court  at  Trier,  Oms- 
dorf was  the  regular  notary  at  the  court  of  St.  Maximin,  and  we  shall  meet  him 
officiating  in  that  capacity  also  at  Pfalzel  and  at  St.  Matthias.  Most  of  the 
evidence  against  Flade  had  thus  been  taken  down,  if  not  inspired  by  him  ;  and 
we  find  him  constantly  active  in  the  later  persecution.     He  was  still  busy  at  it 


30  George  L,  Burr  s  Paper.  [216 

mayed  Assessor  at  once  returned  a  long  and  humble  petition 
to  be  excused  from  the  ungrateful  task,  pleading  his  intimate 
relations  with  the  family,  his  great  and  repeated  obligations 
to  the  accused,  their  kinship,  and  adding  that  within  the  last 
few  weeks  Dietrich  Flade  had  stood  godfather  to  his  child. 
But  the  Elector  sent  an  immediate  and  peremptory  refusal ; 
and  poor  Fath  could  only  insist  on  filing  his  letter  of  protest 
among  the  papers  of  the  case  and  enter  upon  his  duties.' 

A  month  later,  on  the  21st  of  August,  the  report  of  Fath 
and  Omsdorf  was  ready.  It  comprised  extracts  from  the 
confessions  of  no  less  than  fourteen  witches,  from  a  half- 
dozen  different  jurisdictions."  Of  their  general  character 
that  of  Margarethe  of  Euren  is  a  sufficient  specimen.  As  a 
stout  but  stately  man,  his  black  beard  streaked  with  gray, 
clad  in  his  long  black  mantle,  with  the  golden  chain  of  his 
rank  about  his  neck,  and  mounted  perhaps  on  a  fiery  horse, 
as  they  had  seen  him  many  a  time  on  high  occasions  in  the 
streets  of  Trier,  so  now  they  claimed  to  have  seen  him  at 
the  witch-sabbath — there  as  elsewhere,  with  his  deep,  clear 
voice,  the  leader  of  the  whole.  Those  of  the  remoter  juris- 
dictions, however,  did  not  mention  Flade  by  name,  but 
spoke  only  of  lordly  folk  who  seemed  to  come  from  Trier. 
As  to  the  witches  of  Trier  itself,  the  Governor  "  could  not 
remember  that  Dr.  Flade  had  been  accused  by  any  person  ; 
for,"  he  added,  "  the  Judge  himself  was  present  in  person  at 
all  the  examinations  and  executions."  And,  even  as  to 
Grimburg,  he  said  that  "  some  had  indeed  been  executed 
there,  but  none  had  accused  Dr.  Flade,  for  the  region  was 

in  July  of  1597,  but  was  dead  in  May  of  1600.  He  must  liave  died  in  tolerably 
good  repute  ;  for  the  charges  of  Scho  ApoUonia  are  objected  to  as  blackening 
the  memory  of  a  minister  of  justice.  As  to  the  part  taken  by  notaries  in  the 
persecution,  see  the  striking  sentences  of  Linden  (page  55)  and  the  words  of 
Hontheim  (p.  10,  note). 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  82-93.  A  separate  letter  to  Omsdorf  instructed  him  also 
as  to  his  duties. 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  93-146.  These  jurisdictions  were  Pfalzel,  St.  Maximin, 
St.  Paulin,  St.  Matthias,  and  Esch,  besides  those  where  inquiry  was  made  in 
vain  ;  but  the  witches  of  Esch,  like  those  of  Grimburg  and  Saarburg,  do  not 
name  Flade, 


217]  1^^^^  P'^t^  of  Dietrich  Flade.  3 1 

remote  from  the  city."  '  From  Pfalzel,  however,  he  had 
much  to  contribute  ;  and,  having  himself  received  from  the 
Elector  a  letter  of  the  same  date  as  those  to  Fath  and  Oms- 
dorf,  the  needed  depositions  had  been  already  sought  out — 
for  it  did  not  become  him,  as  he  deprecatingly  remarked  to 
Fath,  to  oppose  the  Elector's  instructions. 

The  only  questionable  evidence  was  that  of  the  witch 
Kirsten  Barbara  at  St.  Matthias.  Peter  Omsdorf  had  him- 
self, as  notary,  taken  down  her  confession  against  Dr.  Flade ; 
but  the  magistrate,  Dr.  Dietrich  Balen,  asserted  that  in  the 
notary's  absence  she  had  retracted  her  accusation,  and  it 
became  necessary  to  take  the  testimony  of  the  assessors  and 
the  court-messenger  as  to  her  words.  The  messenger  swore 
that  she  had  indeed  wished  to  retract  her  confession,  and 
that  he  had  sent  word  of  this  to  Dr.  Flade,  who  in  reply  had 
told  him  not  to  trouble  himself  about  the  matter,  but  to 
bear  himself  as  a  messenger  should.  The  kind-hearted 
fellow  had  also  asked  the  witch  why,  by  retracting  her  con- 
fession, she  caused  herself  again  to  be  tortured  ;  to  which 
she  had  bravely  made  answer,  that  "  it  were  better  she 
should  suffer  a  little  than  that  she  should  do  others  a 
wrong."  But  the  poor  woman  had  overrated  her  strength, 
and  all  agreed  that  she  had  reaffirmed  her  accusations.  The 
Governor  had  given  the  Commission  the  additional  informa- 
tion that  when,  on  the  morning  of  Barbara's  execution  he 
had  himself  ridden  out  from  the  city  to  receive  the  criminal 
according  to  custom,  he  had  met  Dr.  Flade  just  outside  the 
New  Gate.  It  being  still  early  they  had  chatted  together, 
though  of  other  matters,  until  the  witch  appeared  ;  and, 
when  he  at  last  rode  to  meet  her,  Dr.  Flade  had  followed. 
Knowing  that  the  magistrate's  friends  had  informed  him  of 
the  woman's  accusation,  the  Governor  and  others  supposed 
that  he  meant  to  confront  her ;  but  instead  Dr.  Flade  had 
flung  his  mantle  over  his  shoulder  and  had  hidden  himself 
in  the  crowd. 

'  He  mentioned,  indeed,  the  testimony  of  Jeckell  of  Reinsfeld  (see  page  18, 
above).  Of  Matthias  of  Weisskirch  not  a  word  was  yet  said.  It  is  to  be  sus- 
pected that  the  Elector  himself  had  enjoined  strict  silence  as  to  the  alleged  plot 
against  his  own  person. 


32  George  L,  Burr's  Paper.  [218 

It  was,  in  sooth,  far  too  late  to  hope  aught  from  the 
silencing  of  a  single  witness.  The  report  of  the  Commission 
had  hardly  reached  the  Elector  before  there  came  to  him 
tidings  of  two  fresh  accusations  against  Flade ;  and  a  letter 
of  September  4th  instructed  Fath  to  renew  his  investiga- 
tion/ Three  days  later  the  Elector  had  found  time  to  dip 
into  the  report,  and  was  so  much  interested  that  he  wrote 
the  Commissioner  to  send  him  the  entire  confessions  in  place 
of  these  extracts ;  but  the  dismay  of  the  local  magistrates 
at  this  proposal  to  submit  their  chaotic  protocols  to  the  eyes 
of  the  sovereign  found  utterance  in  such  a  torrent  of  argu- 
ments that  it  was  suffered  to  drop."  Meanwhile  the  evidence 
against  Flade  multiplied  day  by  day  ;  and  when,  at  the  end 
of  September,  Fath  handed  in  his  supplementary  report,  it 
included  six  new  depositions.' 

A  day  or  two  later  came  an  incident  which,  under  the  legal 
maxims  of  that  day,  was  even  more  damning  evidence  of 
Dietrich  Flade's  guilt — his  attempt  at  flight.  It  was  on 
Monday,  the  3d  of  October,  1588,  that  the  imperilled  old 
man  found  an  opportunity  for  this  last  desperate  experi- 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  161,  162. 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  173-177. 

"Flade  trial,  pp.  163-173.  They  are  all  from  Pfalzel  and  St.  Maximin. 
It  is  already  clear,  however,  that  the  Elector  had  knowledge  of  the  case  from 
other  sources  than  his  Commissioner  ;  and  with  the  reports  of  the  Commission 
he  later,  by  accident  or  design,  submitted  to  the  court  charged  with  Flade's 
trial  three  other  bodies  of  accusation,  which  have  found  a  permanent  place  in 
the  records  of  the  case  (Flade  trial,  pp.  147-159).  What  seem  to  me  the 
originals  of  these,  in  three  distinct  handwritings,  all  differing  from  Fath's,  are 
among  the  Clotten  fragments  at  Trier  (see  note,  page  5  above).  The  first  of 
them,  perhaps  from  Johann  Zandt,  contains  only  the  testimony  of  the  next 
Pfalzel  witch  who  accused  Flade  after  Fath's  first  report.  The  second,  very 
possibly  the  work  of  Omsdorf,  anticipates  in  its  contents  the  whole  of  Fath's 
second  report — and  more  ;  for  it  includes  the  later  confessions  of  two  witches 
burned  in  October.  Nay,  more  still  :  it  adds  the  story  of  Matthias  of  Weiss- 
kirch  (p.  24,  above),  which  only  thus  makes  its  way  into  the  records. 
And,  not  content  even  with  this,  the  anonymous  reporter  goes  on  to  tell  the 
story  of  Flade's  flight,  of  which  we  have  next  to  speak.  The  third  of  these 
transmitted  papers  is  a  certified  extract,  dated  7  December,  1588,  from  the 
confession  of  a  single  Saarburg  witch.  It  is  to  this  alone  that  can  properly 
apply  the  Elector's  sentence  of  enclosure  which  follows  it  in  the  record  :  "  Diese 
Urgichten  seint  unss  an  stundt,  von  unserm  Amptman  zu  Sarburgh  einko- 
menn."     Was  the  plural  intentionally  misleading  ? 


219]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  33 

ment.'  Johann  von  Eltz,  Commander  of  the  Teutonic  Order 
at  Trier/  was  that  day  to  set  out  on  a  journey  to  the  com- 
mandery  at  Beckingen  on  the  Saar,  and  thence  to  the  assizes 
at  Bolchen  in  Lorraine ;  and  he  had  consented  that  Dr. 
Flade  should  be  his  passenger.  He  too,  he  told  the  Com- 
mander, had  errands  in  that  direction — debts  to  collect, 
foreign  money  to  exchange  ;  and,  furthermore,  he  wished  to 
escort  his  young  nephew,  Johann  Homphaeus,  to  the  uni- 
versity at  Pont-^-Mousson.*  Accordingly,  when,  that  morn- 
ing, Johann  von  Eltz  with  his  coach  reached  the  suburb  of 
Heiligkreuz,  he  found  there  awaiting  him,  as  by  appoint- 
ment, Dr.  Flade  and  his  nephew.  As  he  took  them  in. 
Dr.  Flade's  maid  appeared,  bearing  on  her  back  a  vintage- 
basket  heavily  laden  with  money  ;  and  this  too  was  stowed 
in  the  coach.  The  fugitive  reached  Beckingen  in  safety,  but 
the  Commander  was  there  overtaken  by  a  message  from 
Trier  taunting  him  with  helping  a  witch  out  of  the  country.* 
Such  a  reproach  no  man  could  bear ;  and,  unconvinced  by 
the  old  man's  pleas,  he  brought  him  back  as  he  had  taken 

*  Of  this  episode  we  have  four  accounts  :  (l)  the  anonymous  one  described  in 
the  last  note  ;  (2)  the  letter  of  the  Burgomasters  to  the  Governor,  mentioned  on 
page  34  ;  (3)  Flade's  letter  to  the  Elector,  as  to  which  see  page  35  ;  and  (4)  that 
given  by  Governor  Zandt  to  the  court  at  the  meeting  described  on  page  40. 

'  "  Landcommenthur  der  Ballei  Lothringen,  Commenthur  zu  Trier  und 
Beckingen,"  was  his  full  title. 

*  This  Lotharingian  school,  much  sought  by  the  youth  of  Trier,  was  then  at 
the  height  of  its  fame.  It  was  just  at  this  time  that  there  went  forth  from  it 
those  three  young  monks  whose  zeal  was  to  work  such  a  sweeping  reformation 
in  the  oldest  religious  orders  of  the  west.  Pont-i-Mousson  was  seventy  or 
eighty  miles  above  Trier,  on  the  Moselle,  midway  between  Metz  and  Nancy. 
Beckingen,  just  at  the  Lotharingian  frontier,  was  some  twenty-five  miles  from 
Treves  ;  and  Bolchen,  or  Boulay,  lay  on  the  uplands,  half-way  from  the  Saar 
to  Metz. 

*  That  so  high  an  official  as  the  Landcommenthur  could  have  been  ignorant 
of  what  had  been  now  for  some  time  town  talk  is  hard  to  believe,  and  the  ren- 
dezvous at  Heiligkreuz  certainly  points  at  collusion.  It  is  more  likely  that  his 
sympathy  or  his  courage  failed  him.  Who  sent  the  message  after  him  we  can 
only  guess,  but  it  may  well  have  been  Johann  Zandt,  who,  at  Grimburg,  was 
(though  not  on  the  direct  road)  far  on  the  way  from  Trier  to  Beckingen.  It  is 
to  be  noted  that  his  account,  alone  of  the  four,  knows  that  the  message  was  a 
letter.  According  to  Flade's  own  account  it  would  seem  that  he  stopped  at 
Beckingen  of  his  own  accord,  and  that  it  was  only  on  the  return  of  Eltz  from 
Bolchen  that  the  latter  insisted  on  taking  him  back  to  Trier. 


34  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [220 

him  away — nephew,  money,  and  all — and  set  him  down  at 
the  city  gate.  He  had  been  gone  just  a  week.  Back  to  his 
house,  lugging  his  gold  himself,  with  the  aid  of  the  gate- 
keeper and  his  family,  crept  the  old  magistrate  ;  and  it  was 
well  for  him  that  a  chance  laborer  could  let  him  through  the 
back  gate  by  breaking  it  open  with  a  hatchet,  * 

For  the  flight  of  Dr.  Flade  had  caused  great  excitement 
in  Trier.  The  Governor  happened  to  be  at  Grimburg,  but 
the  two  Burgomasters,  Nicolas  Fiedler  and  Johann  von 
Kesten,  wrote  him  on  the  day  after  the  fugitive's  return  a 
full  account  of  the  affair.  They  had,  they  assured  him, 
warned  the  gate-keepers  not  again  to  let  him  out  of  the  city  ; 
and  none  too  soon,  for  that  very  morning  he  had  made  dili- 
gent inquiry  at  the  gate,  through  the  husband  of  a  former 
servant,  as  to  whether  his  exit  was  forbidden.* 

Johann  Zandt  hastened  back  to  the  city,  conferred  with 
the  Burgomasters,  and  summoned  Flade  to  appear  before 
them  at  the  town-hall.  Fearing  arrest,  however,  or  wishing 
to  gain  time,  he  sent  his  little  nephew,  Franz  Homphaeus, 
to  learn  their  errand  ;  and,  although  the  boy  was  assured  that 
his  uncle  might  come  without  risk,  he  did  not  appear.  The 
gatekeepers  were  thereupon  officially  cautioned ;  and  to 
good  purpose,  for  that  very  afternoon  Dr.  Flade  made  an 
attempt  to  issue  from  the  east  gate  of  the  town.'     But  the 

'  Flade's  house  was  in  the  street  which  still  takes  its  name  from  the  old 
crane  on  the  quay  at  its  end  ;  but  the  Krahnen-Strasse  then  included  the 
whole  stretch  from  the  Brucken-Strasse  to  the  river.  The  house  I  have  not 
been  able  to  identify. 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  69-74.  Both  Fiedler  and  Kesten  went  themselves  to 
the  stake  for  witchcraft  in  1591 — the  victims,  as  I  believe,  of  that  Johann 
Zandt  to  whom  they  addressed  this  letter.  Both,  like  Flade,  were  men  of 
wealth  ;  and  for  their  trials,  too,  it  was  Omsdorf  who  collected  the  evidence. 
The  records  of  Fiedler's  trial  are  still  extant  at  Trier,  and  were  printed,  with 
notes,  by  Wyttenbach,  in  the  Trierische  Chronik  for  1825.  Kesten  had  been 
an  Assessor  of  Flade's  court  at  Trier  since  1576  (his  letter  of  February  6th  of 
that  year  thanking  the  Elector  for  his  appointment  is  in  the  Stadt-iBibliothek 
at  Trier),  and  Fiedler  also  was  one  of  the  oldest  members  of  that  court. 

*  "  Zu  Mosell  pfortten."  That  this  means  the  Muss-Pforte  (Porta  Musilis) 
is  clear  from  the  context  ;  but,  for  proof  that  this  oddly  misleading  name  was 
usual,  see  an  article  by  Miiller  in  the  Trierische  Chronik  for  November,  1818. 


22 1 ]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  35 

unhappy  man  was  now  an  object  of  curiosity  to  the  rabble 
of  the  streets.  A  noisy  mob,  largely  of  students,  gathered 
at  his  heels  ;  and  when  he  was  turned  back  from  the  gate 
the  crowd  grew  so  boisterous  in  its  abuse  that  he  was  forced 
to  take  refuge  in  the  near  Cathedral,  whence  he  escaped 
through  a  passage  into  the  adjoining  Church  of  Our  Lady, 
and  thence  by  way  of  the  cloister  into  the  house  of  one  of 
the  capitulars.  Here  he  had  to  stay  until  evening,  when,  at 
the  instance  of  the  Cathedral  Provost  and  Dean,  the  Gov- 
ernor granted  him  an  escort  home  through  the  streets.' 

For  the  present  he  was  suffered  to  remain  here ;  but 
townsmen  were  deputed  by  the  Governor  to  watch  him, 
night  and  day,  until  certain  of  his  friends  gave  bail  for  him, 
and  he  himself  made  oath,  on  pain  of  forfeit  of  all  his  prop- 
erty, not  to  leave  the  town.  But  his  bondsmen  soon  grew 
tired  or  ashamed  of  their  burden :  on  the  30th  of  December 
the  Elector  released  them,  and  he  was  again  watched,  at  his 
own  cost,  by  four  citizens,  two  each  from  Trier  and  from 
Pfalzel.' 

Such  was  the  state  of  affairs  when,  on  the  5th  of  January, 
1589,  Dr.  Flade  made  his  last  despairing  appeal  to  the 
Elector.  Vehemently  protesting  his  innocence  before  God, 
he  begs  "  out  of  a  deeply  troubled  heart  and  a  sorrowful 
mind  "  that  he  be  at  last  permitted  to  purge  himself  of  the 
shameful  charges  against  him.  The  scandal  and  ignominy 
are  more  than  he  can  bear.  He  denies  that  he  has  sought  to 
leave  the  country  without  the  Elector's  permission,  though 
he  admits  that  certain  of  his  friends  had  hoped  to  gain  this 
for  him  at  the  approaching  Landtag.     He  appeals  to  his 

'  Flade  trial,  pp,  64,  65.  Dr.  Flade's  own  explanation  of  the  aflfair,  in  his 
letter  to  the  Elector,  was  that  his  nephew  had  misunderstood  or  misquoted  the 
answer  of  the  city  magnates,  and  that  he  had  then  sought,  not  to  leave  the 
city,  but  to  go  for  advice  to  the  Cathedral  Provost,  having  no  longer  kin  of  his 
own  blood  at  Trier  to  advise  him  ;  that,  the  Provost  being  in  chapter-meeting, 
he  had  been  forced  to  wait  until  too  late  to  appear  before  the  Governor  and 
Burgomasters  ;  and  that  he  had  then  resolved,  in  order  to  escape  the  insults  of 
the  rabble,  to  take  up  his  abode  for  a  time  at  the  abbey  of  St.  Matthias,  and 
so  had  sought  exit  at  the  city  gate.     (Flade  trial,  pp.  78-80.) 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  3,  4,  65,  66,  80. 


36  George  L,  Burr's  Paper.  [222 

own  long  and  loyal  service  and  to  the  high  standing  of  his 
kin  by  marriage.  If  there  may  not  be  granted  him  "  secur- 
ity against  the  fury  of  the  populace  "  until  he  can  establish 
his  innocence,  he  asks  at  least  permission  to  retire  from  the 
world  for  the  rest  of  his  life  into  a  religious  order  somewhere 
away  from  Trier.' 

But  the  Elector  had  far  other  plans.  On  the  14th  of 
January,  1589,  he  laid  Flade's  letter,  with  a  copy  of  the 
evidence  against  him,  before  the  theological  faculty  at 
Trier,  Accompanying  it  was  a  most  suggestive  appeal  for 
their  advice."  "It  has  doubtless  long  ago  come  to  your 
knowledge,"  he  writes,  "  into  what  general  suspicion  of 
witchcraft  our  Judge  at  Trier,  Dr.  Dietrich  Flade,  has 
fallen,  and  what  has  since  taken  place  as  to  his  flight.  Now, 
although  at  first,  when  he  was  accused  by  only  one  or  two 
of  the  persons  executed  for  witchcraft,  we  thought  the  mat- 
ter hardly  worthy  of  notice,  and  therefore  for  a  while,  on 
account  of  his  rank,  let  the  matter  drift ;  yet  afterward  the 
scandal  grew  ever  greater,  and  the  accusations  of  the  witches, 
both  old  and  young,  men  and  women,  became  so  frequent 
that  we  were  led  to  have  the  trials,  in  so  far  as  they  related 
to  him,  excerpted,  and  find  that  twenty-three  executed  men 
and  women  have  confessed  against  him,  and  persisted  firmly 
in  the  assertion  to  their  end  that  he  was  with  and  among 
them  at  their  witch-sabbaths,  took  the  lead  in  evil  sugges- 
tions, and  helped  personally  to  carry  them  out.  And  these 
confessions  come  not  from  one  court  alone,  but  from  many 
different  ones — from  Trier,  Maximin,  Paulin,  Euren,  Esch, 
St.  Matthias,  Pfalzel,  Saarburg,  and  elsewhere ;  and  the  sus- 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  75-81. 

^  The  preservation  of  this  document  we  owe  to  one  Embden,  a  student  at 
Trier  of  the  eminent  jurist,  Neller,  who,  in  1779,  doubtless  inspired  by  his 
master,  resurrected  it  (probably  from  the  university  archives)  and  printed 
it  with  a  commentary  in  his  Conatus  exegeticus  (Trier,  "i-TJ^^,  a  disputation 
under  Neller's  presidency.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  Embden,  and  probably 
therefore  Neller  also,  still  believes  in  the  reality  of  witchcraft,  and  even  of  the 
witch-sabbath.  The  Elector's  communication  was  addressed  to  the  Rector 
(then  Helias  Heymans,  Dean  of  St.  Simeon)  and  "  gantzen  facultet  Theologorum 
unserer  universiteten  in  unserer  Statt  Trier."  It  is  reprinted  by  Conrad  in  his 
Trierische  Geschichte  {W^A^razx,  1821). 


223]  'T^  Pf^t^  of  Dietrich  Flade.  37 

picion  is  increased  by  the  fact  that  others  accused  by  these 
same  persons  have  been  found  guilty  and  have  confessed — 
among  them  some  of  considerable  respectability,  except 
that  partly  through  avarice,  partly  through  unchastity  and 
other  devilish  impulses,  they  have  fallen  into  this  wretched- 
ness. All  this  you  will  learn  from  the  enclosed  Extract,  and 
especially  what  a  young  boy  who  was  misled  into  such 
witch-doings  confessed  freely  and  without  constraint  against 
him,  Flade,  though  he  had  never  before  known  him,  with 
description  of  his  person,  rank,  and  appearance,  and  how, 
seeing  him  by  chance  at  an  execution,  he  immediately, 
without  anybody's  suggestion,  pointed  him  out  and  said 
that  he  was  the  one  who  had  been  always  at  the  witch- 
sabbaths.  Well  known  to  you,  moreover,  is  what  afterwards 
occurred  in  connection  with  his  second  attempt  at  flight. 
And  we  send  you  also  herewith  the  petition  the  said  Dr. 
Flade  wrote  us,  wherein  at  the  end  he  almost  betrays  him- 
self, desiring  us  to  allow  him  to  enter  the  monastic  life,  and 
offering  us  the  disposition  of  his  property ' ;  a  thing  which 
surely,  if  he  were  not  conscious  of  guilt,  was  not  likely  to  be 
done  by  him,  a  man  notoriously  avaricious  and,  as  shown  by 
an  investigation  heretofore  made,  of  such  character  that 
by  reason  of  his  avarice  justice  was  almost  ill-administered, 
so  that  we  perhaps  already  had  cause  enough  to  dismiss  him 
from  his  office.  When  we  bethink  us,  however,  of  the  posi- 
tion of  honor  he  has  so  long  held,  and  remember  too  that 
among  scholars  there  are  current  all  sorts  of  objections  as  to 
the  confessions  that  this  one  or  that  has  been  seen  at  the 
witch-sabbath,  we  have  wished,  for  the  sake  of  further 
information,  and  especially  because  witchcraft  is  counted 
among  the  ecclesiastical  crimes,  and  it  has  heretofore  been 
customary  for  such  cases  to  be  first  submitted  to  ecclesiasti- 
cal judges,  and  then  after  their  finding  to  be  remitted  to  the 

'  This  seems  to  me  a  misunderstanding  of  Flade's  letter.  What  he  offered 
was  the  disposition  of  himself.  He  asked  "  ihnn  gaistlichen  standt  .  .  . 
mich  zubegeben,  jhe  doch  meine  Disposition  in  E.  Churf.  gnaden  gnadigste 
anordtnungh  underthienigst  heimstellendt."  His  property  he  nowhere  speaks 
of.  The  other  misconceptions  and  misstatements  of  the  Elector's  rescript  need 
no  pointing  out. 


38  George  L.  Burr's  Paper.  [224 

lay  judge/  not  to  omit  to  consult  in  this  matter  the  theo- 
logical faculty  as  well  as  the  jurists,  so  that  nobody,  whether 
of  high  or  of  low  degree,  may  have  right  to  complain,  and 
that  in  the  administration  of  justice  we  may  fall  into  no 
error.  Therefore  it  is  our  gracious  will,"  concludes  the 
Elector,  "  that  you  of  the  theological  faculty  come  together 
privately  and  consider  this  matter  as  its  importance  de- 
mands, and  immediately  let  us  know  in  writing  how  you 
find  it,  according  to  the  canon  law  and  the  unanimous 
opinion  of  the  theologians,  that  we  may  take  such  further 
steps  as  it  behooves,  and  that  Justice  may  be  left  to  her 
course  without  respect  of  persons." 

But,  despite  the  evident  ill-will  of  this  letter,  the  theo- 
logians of  Trier  seem  to  have  been  as  obdurate  as  the 
scholars  and  jurists  of  the  Elector's  court.  At  least,  no 
finding  of  theirs  was  transmitted  to  the  tribunal  now 
charged  with  the  final  step.  On  March  23d  instructions 
were  issued  to  Johann  Zandt  von  Merl  for  the  arrest  of  Dr. 
Flade  and  his  confinement  in  the  town-hall ;  but  it  was  not 
till  a  month  later,  on  April  22d,  that  the  Governor  thought 
it  wise  to  convene  the  court  and  put  the  writ  in  execution. 
Even  then,  as  we  are  told  by  the  clerk,  "  the  Acting  Judge 
[Dr.  Heinrich  Hultzbach,  of  Saarburg,  Flade's  deputy  and 
eventual  successor]  and  the  Assessors  had  sympathy  with 
Dr.  Flade  and  declared  that  they  would  rather  have  been 
relieved  of  this  thing  than  charged  with  it "  ;  but  the  arrest 
was  carried  out,  although  the  old  man  had  a  disabled  thigh 
and  had  to  be  borne  to  his  prison  in  a  chair.  On  May  loth' 
he  was  transported  to  the  Electoral  palace,  there  to  confront 
two  priests,  convicted  of  witchcraft,  who  had  confessed 
against  him.  The  priests  repeated  their  accusation  to  his 
face  ;  "  whereupon  Dr.  Flade  answered,  *  It  can  and  may 

■  A  very  significant  statement,  of  which  I  have  found  no  confirmation  in  the 
extant  records  at  Trier, 

'Flade  trial,  pp.  i-6.  He  was  imprisoned  in  the  "great  hall"  ("so  der 
Burgergefenghnuss  ist  ")  of  the  Rathhaus,  and  a  special  keeper  assigned  him, 
who  should  permit  him  no  communication  with  the  outside  world.  In  the 
meantime  an  inventory  was  made  of  the  contents  of  his  house,  and  his  papers 
and  valuables  taken  into  custody  (pp.  6,  7). 


225]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  39 

be  that  you  saw  my  figure,  but  my  person  surely  not,'  and 
he  cited  certain  examples,  and  argued  that  these  were  pure 
ohfascinationes  and  delusions  of  the  Devil." '  He  was  now 
borne  back  to  his  prison  and  left  to  himself  again,  while  the 
Elector  drew  up,  and  on  June  9th  transmitted,  careful 
instructions  and  a  list  of  questions,  based  on  the  absurd 
allegations  of  the  witches,  for  his  examination.* 

On  the  nth  of  July  Flade  was  examined  upon  these 
questions,  and  answered  with  much  spirit.  He  denied  all 
complicity  in,  or  knowledge  of,  the  doings  of  the  witches, 
again  insisting  that,  if  he  were  seen  by  them,  it  was  through 
some  delusion  of  the  Devil's,  and  citing  the  phenomena  of 
dreams  in  support  of  his  theory  ;  but  at  the  end  he  begged 
a  day  or  two's  time  to  bethink  himself  further,  and  asked 
that  his  confessor  might  be  suffered  to  visit  him.  These 
requests  were  granted,  and  his  replies  forwarded  to  the 
Elector," 

That  prelate  was  unmoved.  On  the  29th  he  sent  to  the 
Governor  his  final  decision.  The  matter  was  now,  he 
declared,  noised  abroad  through  the  whole  Empire  and  out- 
side it,  and  it  behooved  the  authorities  to  see  that  sacred 
justice  take  its  course.  Accordingly  he  transmitted  the 
testimony  against  Flade,  with  all  other  documents  in  his 
hands  pertaining  to  the  case,  and  instructed  the  court  over 
which  Dr.  Flade  had  so  long  presided  to  proceed  against  him. 

In  the  meantime  the  Acting  Judge  and  most  of  the 
Assessors  had  deserted  the  city.  Their  ostensible  and  suf- 
ficient excuse  was  the  pestilential  midsummer  air  of  the 
town  ;  but  it  is  to  be  noted  that  not  more  than  two  had 
been  present  at  any  of  the  earlier  proceedings  against  Flade, 
and  that  the  letters  written  by  order  of  the  Governor  to 
summon  them  back  make  no  mention  of  the  trial  of  Flade 
among  the  items  of  business   demanding  their  attention. 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  8-12. 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  12-34.  He  had,  he  said,  in  his  letter  of  transmission,  con- 
sulted impartial  jurists,  who  advised  him  to  delay  yet  a  little  the  formal  indict- 
ment until  further  "  inquisition  "  could  be  made. 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  34-55. 

*  Flade  trial,  p.  78. 


40  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [226 

They  came,  however,  at  the  summons' ;  and  on  August  5th 
the  Governor  detailed  to  them  the  whole  history  of  the 
case,  laying  before  them  the  evidence  and  the  Elector's  in- 
structions. They  asked  time  for  consideration,  and  two  or 
three  days  later  sent  in  a  unanimous  request  to  be  excused 
from  the  duty,  pleading  their  long  and  kindly  relations 
with  the  accused,  and  protesting  that  they  had  no  official 
knowledge  that  he  was  not  still  their  head.  But  the  Elector 
returned  a  prompt  refusal,  declaring  that  Flade  had  long 
been  relieved  of  his  office  ;  and  the  Governor  assured  them 
there  was  no  use  putting  the  matter  off — "  the  apple  must 
be  bitten."  " 

On  August  17,  1589,  therefore,  the  formal  trial  of  Flade 
was  at  last  begun.  Into  all  its  sickening  details  we  need 
not  go :  it  differed  little  from  other  witch-trials,  save  in  its 
greater  caution  and  in  the  trained  subtlety  of  the  victim. 
When  he  found  confession  inevitable,  he  at  first  tried  to 
escape  the  torture  by  admitting  other  intercourse  with  the 
Devil,  while  still  denying  all  witchcraft  proper.  But  this 
was  as  idle  as  were  his  personal  appeals  to  his  judges.  By 
civil  as  by  canon  law  witchcraft  was  an  "  excepted  crime  "  ; 
and  not  his  rank,  not  his  age,  not  his  academic  title,  not  the 
infirmities  of  his  body,"  could  save  the  proud  old  man  from 
the  ignominy  of  the  executioner's  touch,  or  set  a  limit  to 
his  torment  till  he  had  confessed  all  that  his  own  imagina- 
tion or  that  of  his  inquisitors  could  suggest.* 

'  Except  Maxitnin  Pergener,  who  could  plead  the  death  of  his  wife.  The 
others  were,  in  the  orthography  of  the  record,  Christopf  Enschringen,  Niclas 
Fiedler,  Claudius  Musiell,  Hans  Kesten,  Bernhard  Schroder  von  Piesport, 
Christopf  Fath,  Wilhelm  Kilburgh,  Carl  Wolff,  Johann  Tholess  von  Ediger, 
and  Hans  Philipp  Boitzheim.  All,  according  to  the  rules  of  the  court,  were 
jurists  ( Rechtsgelehrten). 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  55-69,  178-184,   187-189. 

^  He  had  a  hernia,  which  caused  him  especial  suffering  in  the  torture. 

■•  The  form  of  torture  usual  at  Trier,  as  generally  throughout  Germany,  was 
that  known  as  the  "strappado  " — in  German,  "  die  Schnur,"  the  cord.  The 
prisoner's  hands,  bound  behind  his  back,  were  made  fast  to  a  rope  drawn  over 
a  pulley  at  the  ceiling,  and  so  lifted  till  his  whole  body  was  wrenched  from  the 
floor  into  the  air,  where  he  was  left  hanging,  sometimes  with  weights  attached 
to  his  feet,  or  with  the  screw  applied  to  his  toes,  to  intensify  the  torment.  It 
need  hardly  be  said  that  it  often  left  men  and  women  crippled  for  life. 


22/]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  41 

It  took,  indeed,  much  pain  and  more  than  a  single  session 
to  bring  the  stubborn  old  man  to  terms;  but  the  executioner 
had  learned  his  trade  now,  and  it  had  long  been  noticed  that 
no  witch  escaped.  Soon  or  late,  in  sanity  or  in  delirium,  the 
agony  always  did  its  work.  Dietrich  Flade  knew  well  what 
a  witch-confession  was  expected  to  be,  and  little  by  little 
they  wrung  from  him  the  grotesque  nonsense  they  sought. 
He  knew,  too,  that,  whatever  else  might  be  omitted,  one 
thing  could  never  be — the  names  of  accomplices.  It  was  of 
no  use  to  allege  that  the  witches  were  masked  or  to  name 
only  those  already  executed  :  such  tricks  were  long  worn 
out.  A  happier  thought  was  it — as  is  proven  by  the  history 
of  more  than  one  witch-persecution — when  he  began  accusing 
his  judges  ;  and  at  least  those  absent  from  the  torture- 
chamber  were  duly  named  in  the  record.  But  no  court 
would  be  content  with  these  alone ;  nor  yet  when,  with  a 
still  truer  instinct,  he  denounced  the  great  of  the  land.* 

Once  it  seemed  as  though  his  tormentors  were  satisfied  ; 
but  the  Elector  returned  the  prisoner's  answers,  declaring 
that  thus  far  they  were  mere  child's  play,  and  the  whole 
procedure  had  to  be  begun  over  again.'  Piteous  was  it 
when  even  the  imagination  of  the  old  Judge  could  no 
further  go,  and,  complaining  of  the  failure  of  his  memory, 
he  was  forced  to  beg  that  the  testimony  against  him  be 
repeated  to  him  as  a  reminder — which  was  done.* 

At  last,  in  mid-September,  his  confession  was  complete. 
Not  a  word  had  yet  been  said,  in  all  the  trial,  of  that  alleged 
bewitchment  of  the  Elector  which,  all  unknown  to  Flade, 
had  lain  at  the  beginning  of  his  troubles.  But  when  the 
court  came  together  on  Saturday,  September  i6th,  to  frame 
its  sentence,  and  had  summoned  the  prisoner  before  it  to 

'  As  "  Her  Philips,  Her  zu  Wynnenburgh,  der  junger,"  Karl  von  "  Kessel- 
stat,  Amptman  im  Hamme,"  and  Philipp  "  Waldeck[er  von  Kaimpt],  der 
Rotmeister."  The  Burgomaster  Hans  Kesten  he  implicates  with  evident 
relish.     But  the  whole  number  of  those  accused  by  him  was  not  large. 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  204,  205.  "  Dasselb  wass  er  noch  zur  reit  von  sich  gethan 
fast  schertzliche  dingh  waren." 

'  Flade  trial,  p.  218. 


42  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [228 

announce  to  him  that  the  following  Monday  would  be  the 
last  day  of  his  life,  Johann  Zandt  von  Merl  turned  to  him 
and  bade  him  relate  to  the  court  what  he  had  already 
privately  confessed  to  himself  as  to  this  attempt  on  the 
Elector's  life.'  The  name  of  the  great  dignitary  whom  he 
now  made  his  accomplice  in  that  impossible  crime  has  since 
been  diligently  blurred  from  the  record  ;  but  with  a  little 
pains  it  may  still  be  deciphered," — nor  is  it  difficult  to  guess 
by  whom  it  was  suggested. 

On  the  morrow  he  witnessed  the  mass  and  received  the 
sacrament  at  the  hands  of  Father  Ellentz  and  another 
Jesuit.*  Early  on  Monday  he  made  some  minor  dispositions 
as  to  his  property  and  confronted  without  flinching  two  of 
those  whom  he  had  accused.*  His  confession  was  then  read 
to  him,  and,  having  assented  to  it,  he  was  led  out  before  the 
open  court  to  hear  his  sentence.  Once  more  Governor 
Zandt  reviewed  the  history  of  his  case,  and  then  in  the  name 
of  public  justice  solemnly  arraigned  him  as  a  witch.  His 
confession  was  read  to  the   court,  in  the  hearing  of   the 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  224-228. 

'  The  "  Her  Dhumbdechant  [Domdechant]  von  der  Leyen,"  with  whom  as 
accomplices  are  named  "  Pauluss  uff  Grymburgh  "  and  "  Michaell  Neuwmetz- 
ler."  The  plot  is  said  to  have  arisen  "  dess  streits  halben,  so  zwischent  dennen 
von  Wynnenburgh  unnd  von  der  Leyen  hiebevom  der  Dhumbprobsteien  halben 
entstanden."  I  am  puzzled  by  the  fact  that,  according  to  Brouwer  and  Masen 
{Metrop.  Eccl.  Trev.,  ed.  Stramberg,  i.,  p.  153),  the  Cathedral  Dean  at  this 
time  was  Hugo  Cratz  von  Scharfenstein,  who  was  elected  Feb.  4,  1588,  and 
held  the  post  till  his  promotion  to  the  Provostship  in  1623.  The  name  of 
Paulus  auf  Grimburg  adds  a  straw  more  to  our  suspicions  of  the  Amtmann  of 
Grimburg.  Dean  Cratz  was  later  repeatedly  accused  by  the  witches  of  St. 
Maximin. 

'  Flade  trial,  p.  228.  The  second  Jesuit  was  Father  Joannes  Gilsius,  magis- 
ter  novitiorum,  and  later  Rector,  of  his  college  at  Trier.  Both  he  and  Father 
Ellentz,  but  especially  the  latter,  saw  much  service  as  witch-confessors. 
Masen  tells  (in  his  Epitome  Ann.  Trev.,  p.  710)  a  curious  story  of  how,  when 
once  Father  Ellentz  was  attending  a  witch  to  the  stake,  the  Devil,  who  had  a 
special  spite  against  him,  tried  to  kill  him  with  a  hail-storm. 

*  The  more  notable  was  Peter  Behr,  a  man  who  had  earlier  played  a  large 
part,  as  a  leader  of  the  popular  party,  in  the  struggle  for  the  city's  independence. 
Behr,  too,  was  tortured  into  a  confession  of  witchcraft,  but  committed  suicide 
by  flinging  himself  from  the  tower  in  which  he  was  imprisoned. 


229]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  43 

assembled  public*  The  Assessors  brought  in  their  verdict, 
and,  as  the  clerk  uttered  the  terrible  closing  words  of  the 
sentence — that  "  Dietrich  Flade,  the  accused,  now  standing 
in  the  presence  of  this  court,  by  reason  of  his  crime,  in  that 
he  denied  God,  devoted  himself  to  the  Evil  One,  served  him 
and  sinned  with  him,  dealt  with  witchcraft  and  did  despite 
to  the  common  weal,  wrought  injury  to  grain  and  herb,  shall 
be  punished  with  fire,  from  life  unto  death,  as  we  him  hereby 
thereunto  doom,  sentence,  and  condemn,  to  Almighty  God 
and  his  mercy  commending  his  soul  " — the  Acting  Judge 
rose  from  the  seat  where  for  thirty  years  Dietrich  Flade 
himself  had  presided  in  honor  and  confirmed  the  sentence 
by  breaking  his  staff  of  office.  Thereupon,  as  was  the  cus- 
tom, the  condemned  man  fell  upon  his  knees  and  craved  the 
mercy  of  the  court ;  in  token  whereof  he  was  accordingly 
commended  to  the  executioner,  to  be  first  "  mercifully  and 
Christianly  strangled,"  and  his  body  then  burned  to  ashes.' 

"  Thus,"  writes  one  who  must  have  been  an  eye-witness,' 
"  as  a  criminal  and  dishonored,  he  heard  his  sentence 
from  the  very  court  whose  severity  he  himself  as  judge  had 

'  Excepting,  of  course,  that  part  of  it  which  spoke  of  the  plot  against  the 
Elector. 

'  Flade  trial,  pp.  234-251. 

'The  Jesuit  Brouwer  (in  his  Ann.  Trev.,  lib.  xxii.).  "  Magiae  et  artium 
execrandarum,  quae  variis  indiciis  et  ipsa  confessione  rei  cumulabantur,  dam- 
natus,  sententiam  mortis  ex  illo  tribunali,  cujus  nempe  severitatem  multis  ipse 
annis  judex  moderatus  erat,  audiit  reus  ac  sordidatus.  Prodeuntem  ad  sup- 
plicii  locum,  quod  iter  gravescente  licet  aetate  et  fessus  serumnis,  pedibus  facere 
voluit,  universa  spectaculi  novitate  prosecuta  civitas  :  cum  ipse  interim  in  omni 
via  tam  altos  spiritus  gereret,  ut  omnibus  animi  fortitudinem  in  ilia  tanta  de- 
jectione  suspicientibus,  nullam  ederet  vocem,  qua  se  vel  casum  suum  mortisve 
probrosae  miseraretur  infamiam.  Ubi  ad  pyram  perventum,  circumfusam 
multitudinem  oratione  tempori  apta,  nee  infracto  quicquam  animo,  allocutus 
est,  hortatusque  ut  illud  exemplum  exitus  tam  luctuosi  acciperent  pro  docu- 
mento,  fraudes  dolosque  inimicissimi  Satanae  vitandi.  Quibus  dictis  et  factis, 
animS  prsesertim  per  Societatis  Jesu  sacerdotem  Christianse  poenitentiae  prse- 
sidiis  instructa,  atrocitatem  culpae  reus  minuit,  mortem  ver6  civibus  approbavit." 
In  the  margin  at  this  passage  Brouwer's  seventeenth-century  editor  and  con- 
tinuator,  Masen,  has  printed,  "  Vide  hac  de  re  Notas  et  Additamenta  nostra  in- 
ferius"  ;  but  repeated  and  most  careful  search  has  failed  to  show  me  anything 
on  this  head  in  his  notes  and  additions.  Perhaps  he  wished  to  add  the  wild 
story  he  later  published  in  his  Ejfitome  (see  p.  46  below). 


44  George  L.  Burr's  Paper.  [230 

for  many  years  restrained.  As  he  went  to  the  place  of 
execution,  whither,  though  he  was  in  declining  years  and 
was  worn  out  by  his  troubles,  he  insisted  on  going  afoot,  the 
whole  city,  stirred  by  the  novel  sight,  followed  after.  And 
yet,  with  such  lofty  spirit  did  he  bear  himself  that  to  not 
one  of  all  those  who  beheld  his  self-control  in  that  terrible 
humiliation  did  he  utter  a  word  of  complaint  for  himself  or 
his  fall  or  the  infamy  of  his  ignominious  death.  When  the 
stake  was  reached  he  addressed  the  thronging  crowd  in 
words  suited  to  the  occasion  and  with  unbroken  spirit,  ex- 
horting them  to  learn  from  the  example  of  his  mournful  fate 
to  shun  the  deceits  and  wiles  of  the  arch-enemy  Satan.  Thus 
by  word  and  deed  the  criminal  mitigated  the  atrocity  of  his 
crime,  yet  justified  to  his  townsmen  his  death."  It  was  the 
1 8th  of  September,  1589. 

Such  was  the  fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  Was  he  a  martyr, 
or  was  he  only  one  more  victim  of  a  superstition  which  he 
shared  and  to  which  he  had  sacrificed  others?  No  historian 
makes  answer.  The  ripple  of  interest  stirred  by  his  fate 
throughout  Europe  found  only  scanty  record  in  the  contem- 
porary annals ' ;  and  even  the   periodical  "  relations,"  then 

'  The  minorite  CratepoHus,  in  his  De  Germania  episcopis  et  orthodoxis  doc- 
toribus,  etc.  (Coin,  1592),  speaks  (pp.  230,  231)  of  "  quid  am  non  infimae  apud 
Reveren.  Electorem  autoritatis  Doctor  Flat,"  who  "  annis  superioribus "  de- 
servedly suffered  death  for  his  witchcraft ;  and  Haraeus,  in  his  Annales  dtuum 
Brabantim  (Antwerp,  1623),  also  mentions  with  approval  the  execution  of 
"  Celebris  pridem  Doctor  I[uris]  Vftriusque]  Flattenus,  Electoris  Trevirensis 
Consiliarius."  A  C6ln  chronicle,  still  unprinted  {Chronicon  Coloniense, 
1500-1596,  ColnStadt-Bibliothek,  A.  II.  70),  speaks  somewhat  more  fully  of 
his  fate,  but  suppresses  his  name,  saying:  "  nomen  viri  factumque  ab  aliis 
multis  proditum  non  attinet  pluribus  enarrare."  Similarly  circumspect  is  a 
little  Trier  manuscript  (codex  1355  of  the  Trier  Stadt-Bibliothek),  which  tells 
us  under  1589,  that  "  Treviris  Senator  quidam  N,  Fl.  afficitur  Supplicio  magiae 
debito  post  seriam  dehortationem  a  curiositate."  But  this  manuscript,  which 
bears  the  name  and  date  of  Joannes  Henricus  Anethanus,  Trevirensis,  1647, 
and  is  not  improbably  the  work  of  that  Weihbischof,  is  clearly  only  a  summary 
of  the  Annales  Trev.  of  Brouwer  ;  and,  indeed,  there  is  appended  to  it  a  simi- 
lar summary  of  his  Metropolis.  It  is  not  this  manuscript,  but  a  blundering 
copy  of  it,  still  to  be  found  at  Bonn  (in  the  volume  called  Gesta  Pon- 
tificum  Trevirorum,  No.  343  of  the  University  Library),  that  is  printed  by 
Hontheim  in  his  Prodromus  as  "  codex  Canonise  Eberhardo-Clusanae." 


23 1]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  45 

fast  ripening  into  the  modern  newspaper,  cared  only  for  the 
tragic  story  of  the  man  himself,'  while  the  news-letters  which 
scattered  broadcast  over  the  empire  the  tidings  of  the 
horrible  confession  and  death  of  such  a  monster  turned 
him   outright   into   another  and   a  wickeder  Faust.*     Even 

'  Thus  Eyzinger's  Relationis  historiccc  continuatio  ,  .  .  iiss  auf  den  ig. 
tag  Septemb.  ij8g  (Coin,  1589),  where  oddly  enough  Flade's  death  is  entered 
under  26  May.  How  the  Fl  of  Flattenus  becomes  the  H  of  Hattenus  is  easier 
to  see.  Among  the  witches  of  Trier,  says  the  relation,  "  war  auch  einer  auss 
den  Fumembsten  Rathen  des  Churfursten  zu  Trier,  eines  grossen  vermSgens 
und  reich  mit  namen  Hattenus  ein  Rechtsgelehrter,  diser  wardt  gefencklich 
eingetzogen,  unnd  fur  einen  zauberer  in  die  sechs  monat  gefangen  gehalten,  als 
er  aber  das  Factum  bekendt,  welches  man  ime  fur  zauberey  aufflegen  wolt, 
und  dagegen  sustineret,  wie  dass  es  aUein  Magia  ware,  unnd  dahin  nit  verstan- 
den  kunte  werden,  als  soil  es  mit  dem,  so  er  bewiesen  und  gethon,  fur  strafliche 
zauberey  gerechnet  werden,  angesehen  es  alles  der  natur  gemess  und  nichts 
teuflisch  oder  obgottisch,  so  begehret  er  derhalben  relaxirt,  und  der  gefenckhnuss 
entschlagen  zuwerden.  Man  hielt  aber  denselben,  als  einen  Radl  fuhrer  der 
andem  zauberer,  welches  mit  ime  gehalten,  damit  man  nun  den  andem  ein 
forcht  an  jaget  von  ihrer  zauberey  abzustehen.  ,  .  ,  So  ist  der  gemelt  Hat- 
tenus allezeit  den  26.  Tag  Maii  von  wegen  zauberey  zum  todt  verurtheilt  und 
gericht  worden,  darauss  woU  ab  zunemen,  das  er  nit  naturaliter  sonder  Diabolice 
mit  der  khunst  wider  Gott  unnd  wider  sein  Gebott,  dem  menschlichen  ge- 
schlacht  zuschaden  an  leib  und  Seel  umbgangen  ist." 

"  Before  the  end  of  1589  Nicolaus  Schreiber  at  Coin  printed  a  Warhafftige 
und  erschreckliche  Beschreibung  von  vielen  Zauberern  oder  Hexen,  wie  und 
warumb  man  sie  kin  und  wider,  verbrandt,  in  disetn  i^Sg.  yahre,  etc.,  (see 
Prutz,  Geschichte  des  deutschen  youmalismus,  p.  167).  This  I  have  not  seen  ; 
but  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  it  is  precisely  this  which  in  1594  he 
reprinted  as  the  second  of  Drei  Warhafftige  Newe  Zeitung  (No.  777  of  Wel- 
ler's  Die  ersten  deutschen  Zeitungen) — Die  ander.  Von  vilen  Hexen  und  Unhol- 
den,  die  man  .  .  .  im  Trierischen  Land,  und  andern  Orten  verbrendt  hat,  etc. 
In  this  (I  have  used  the  copy  in  the  Kantonal-Bibliothek  at  Aarau  in  Switzer- 
land), several  of  whose  fifteen  stanzas  are  devoted  to  Flade,  though  without 
naming  him,  he  is  thus  introduced : 

"  Nun  muss  ich  jetzund  zeigen  an, 

Sie  hetten  under  in  einen  Hauptman, 
derselb  ihr  Konig  ware, 

Ein  furtrefflicher  gelehrter  Mann, 

Doctor  in  der  Astronomy  schon, 
unnd  aller  Kunst  erfahren, 

der  hat  mit  seiner  Zauberey, 

gross  hertzen  Leid  gestifftet, 

vil  Menschen  unnd  Vieh  mancherley, 
gestorben  und  vergiflFtet, 

dem  Doctor  Fausto  vergleichet  er, 


46  George  L.  Burr  5  Paper.  [232 

in  his  own  home,  history  soon  yielded  him  to  legend. 
Not  a  century  had  gone  before  he  appeared  in  the  pages 
of  Masen  *  as  a  second  Theophilus,  led  in  his  youth  into 
magic  by  a  student's  curiosity  and  bargaining  with  the 
Devil  for  learning  and  station  at  the  price  of  merely 
teaching  that  "  Hell  is  not  so  hot,  nor  the  Devil  so  black, 
as  people  think  ";  but  cheated  at  last  by  his  Satanic  ally, 
who  tempts  him  to  go  masked  to  the  witch-sabbaths,  that 
he  may  the  more  easily  convict  the  witches  brought  before 
his  court,  then  at  last  unmasks  him  to  the  others'  sight 
and  leaves  him  the  victim  of  their  vengeance. 

But,  a  decade  after  Flade's  death,  the  learned  Jesuit 
Delrio,  writing  at  Lifege,  less  than  a  hundred  miles  away, 
his  monumental  book  in  support  of  witch-persecution,  and 
needing  a  modern  instance  to  stay  his  doctrine  that  the 

von  seiner  Zaubereye, 
ein  grosses  Buch  zu  schreiben  wer." 
It  surely  was  not  without  its  influence  on  Flade's  fate  that  it  was  just  the  years 
of  his  accusation  and  trial  which  saw  the  appearance  of  the  Faust  Volksbiicher ; 
and  it  is  possible  that  his  fate  was  not  without  its   counter-influence  on   the 
popular  interest  in  the  Faust  story. 

'  Epitome  Ann.  Trev.  (Trier,  1676),  p.  6gi.  "  Quando  rursum  domestica 
Magorum  infamia  Treviris,  in  prsecipuae  etiam  dignitatis  persona,  Theodorico 
reorum  Judice  atque  urbis  Prsetore,  ipso  non  diffitente,  emanavit.  Quiquidem, 
utex  Actis  Judicialibus  notum,  rudibus  annis,  curiositate  libri,  quo  Daemon,  ad 
secretas  artes  tradendas  evocabatur,  ductus,  cum  legeret  mox  praesentera, 
honesta  viri  specie,  Daemonem  habuit.  Qui  ad  studia,  quorum  amore  tene- 
batur  se  eidem  promotorem  obtulit :  nee  quicquam  postulavit  obsequii,  nisi,  ut 
cum  sermo  ita  ferret,  diceret :  Infernum  non  adehesse  calidum,  nee  Dcemonem 
tam  nigrum  esse,  quhm  vulgus  fingeret. 

"  Et  quidem  tantiim  Uteris  jurisque  demum  scientia  excelluit,  ut  Principi  k. 
consiliis  factus,  Judiciis  demum  etiam  praesideret.  Sed  cum  seusim  eum 
abduxisset  Daemon  longius,  impetrassetque,  ut  Magorum  conventibus,  larva 
ipse  tectus,  interesset,  ideoque  in  qusestionibus  exercendis  i  se  conspectos 
facilius  convinceret,  fefellit  denique  pleno  in  consensu  Daemon,  larvamque 
detraxit ;  unde  k  suis  consortibus  in  societatem  criminis  vocatus,  licet  diu 
restiterit ;  quod  ab  invidia,  non  veritate,  profectam  accusationem  sontium 
examinatores  crederent :  tamen  postrem6  testimoniis  obrutus,  postquam  sine 
noxa  cujusquam  se  hoc  crimen  admisisse  diu  frustra  contendisset,  cessit  justi- 
tise.  .  .  .  Cognomentum  tamen  Rei,  munerumque  quae  obiit  gravitatem, 
consulto  quorundam  in  gratiam  dissimulamus." 

The  oddest  thing  about  this  odd  tale  is  that  Masen  claims  to  know  it  "ex 
Actis  Judicialibus." 


233]  1'^  P<^ie  of  Dietrich  Flade.  47 

protector  of  witches  is  probably  himself  a  witch,  wrote  this 
startling  sentence :  "  In  our  own  times  Dr.  Vlaet,  one  of 
the  councillors  of  the  Elector  of  Trier,  tried  this  with  all  his 
might  and  main  ;  but  to  him  stoutly  opposed  himself  Peter 
Binsfeld  with  a  learnedly  written  confutation  of  his  error — to 
wit,  his  book  *  On  the  Confessions  of  Witches.'  "  "  This 
Vlaet,"  he  adds,  "  being  arrested,  at  last  confessed  his  crime 
and  deceit,  and  was  burned  at  the  stake." ' 

The  statement  is  not  incredible.  True,  Bishop  Binsfeld 
himself,  who  first  published  his  book  in  1 589,*  the  very  year  of 
Flade's  trial  and  death,  does  not  mention  his  name ' ;  but 
there  is  much  in  the  book  that  is  hardly  less  significant. 
In  the  preface  to  this  first  edition  he  expressly  tells  us  that 
he  prints  it  in  the  hope  of  dispelling  a  skepticism  which  hin- 
dered the  punishment  of  witches  in  his  own  home.*     It  is  to 

'  Delrio,  Disquisitiones  magicje  (Louvain,  1 599-1601),  lib.  v.,§  4  (vol.  iii.,  p. 
36).  Flade  had  already  been  mentioned  at  lib.  ii.,  qu.  12  ;  and  in  later 
editions  he  is  again  |named  at  lib.  v.,  §  16.  In  the  earlier  draft  of 
Delrio's  book,  in  the  National  Library  at  Brussels  (codex  3633  :  De  super- 
stiiione  et  malts  artibus),  Flade  is  not  mentioned  ;  but  the  passage  quoted 
appears  unchanged  in  all  the  revisions  of  the  printed  work.  Delrio,  I  think, 
never  visited  Trier,  though  in  a  letter  to  Justus  Lipsius  (  Burmann's  Sylloges 
epistolarum,  Leyden,  1731,  vol.  i.)  of  June  3,  1591,  he  speaks  of  meaning  to  do 
so  ("  Cogito  hinc  Treviros,  atque  illinc  ad  vos,"  etc.)  ;  but  between  that  city 
and  Liege  intercourse  was  constant,  and  in  the  same  letter  Delrio  mentions 
the  arrival,  while  he  was  writing,  of  messages  "quas  tabellarius  Trevirensis 
attulit."  Moreover  Delrio's  book,  which  made  much  stir  in  the  learned  world, 
must  have  been  at  once  known  to  his  fellow-Jesuits  at  Trier  ;  and,  though 
Binsfeld  was  dead  (in  1 598),  there  were  many  (as  Father  Ellentz  or  Christoph 
Brouwer)  who  must  have  known  whether  the  statement  about  Flade  was  true 
and  who  could  have  been  trusted  to  prevent  an  error's  recurrence  in  later 
editions. 

'  See  note,  p.  13  above. 

'  This  is  not  strange.  Even  when,  in  a  later  edition,  Binsfeld  had  occa- 
sion to  confute  Loos,  who  had  written  a  book  in  reply  to  him,  he  out  of  pro- 
fessed courtesy  suppressed  his  adversary's  name  ;  and  Loos  himself  had  been 
not  less  considerate.  Moreover,  as  we  have  already  seen,  all  Trier  writers  of 
the  time  conceal  Flade's  name — doubtless  out  of  regard  for  his  family.  Both 
the  Flades  and  the  Homphaei  continued  to  hold  positions  of  dignity  in  the 
Electorate. 

*  Being  the  more  willing  to  publish  it,  he  says,  "quanto  certiis  cognovi 
plures  esse,  .  .  .  qui  profecto  aut  propria  privataque  affectione  depressi,  aat 
dsemonum  illusione  excsecati,  non  cognoscunt,  nee  sentiunt,  nos  omnes  in  hac 


48  George  L.  Burr's  Paper.  [234 

judges,  above  all,  that  from  beginning  to  end  his  book  is 
addressed :  their  sluggishness,  their  errors,  their  doubts, 
receive  his  longest  and  most  earnest  paragraphs.  Nor  is 
what  he  combats  a  mere  general  incredulity  as  to  the  worth 
of  the  witch-confessions ;  it  is  a  particular  form  of  it — the 
form  represented  not  by  the  physician  Weyer,  whose  here- 
sies on  this  point  were  the  current  ones,  but  by  the  long- 
dead  jurist  Ponzinibius,  who  did  not  question  the  testimony 
of  the  witches  against  themselves,  but  denied  all  validity  to 
their  denunciation  of  others.  "  I  have  wished,"  says  Bins- 
feld,  "  the  principal  scope  of  my  treatise  to  be  the  question, 
whether  faith  is  to  be  put  in  the  confession  of  witches 
against  their  accomplices  ";  and  only  for  the  better  elucida- 
tion of  this  does  he  treat  the  general  question  at  all.  That 
the  objections  of  Ponzinibius  are  matters  of  present  impor- 
tance he  proves  by  an  illustration  :  "  I  remember,"  he  says, 
"  myself  to  have  heard  from  a  certain  jurist  (whether  in 
earnest  or  in  jest  I  cannot  say)  that  he  cared  naught  for  a 
thousand  denunciations."  And  he  devotes  the  closing  para- 
graphs of  his  work  to  refuting  those  who  explain  the  denun- 
ciations by  the  theory  that  the  Devil  can  himself  imperso- 
nate whom  he  will  at  the  witch-sabbaths.' 

Now,  the  only  tribunal  in  Bishop  Binsfeld's  neighborhood, 
of  whose  sluggishness,  so  far  as  extant  records  show,  he 
could  have  reason  to  complain,  was  that  of  which  Dietrich 
Flade  was  the  head.  Witch-trials  this  court  also  had,  even 
under  his  presidency,  as  with  so  zealous  a  public  prosecutor 
as  Johann  Zandt  it  could  hardly  help  having;  but,  as  com- 
pared with  the  terrible  activity  of  its  rural  neighbors  or 
with  its  own  after  Flade's  death,  there  is  reason  enough  to 
suspect  it  of  sloth."    As  if  to  prove  that  its  rival,  the  ecclesi- 

patria  ob  multitudinem  Maleficorum  et  Sagarum,  non  solum  periclitari  in  vita, 
fortunis  rebusque  omnibus  ad  humanse  vitse  conservationem  necessariis,  sed 
etiam  gravissimo  animarum  salutis  discrimini  exponi." 

'  And  it  is  to  be  noted  how  the  original  preface  is  dropped,  and  all  the  pro- 
portions of  the  work  changed,  in  the  later  editions,  when  he  has  the  book  of 
Loos  and  the  theories  of  Weyer  to  answer. 

'  That  witches  had  been  condemned  by  it,  we  know  from  Flade's  own  mouth, 
for  when  asked,  in  the  course  of  his  confession,  how,  knowing  himself  guilty  of 


235]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  49 

astical  court  at  Trier,  shared  none  of  this  caution,  the 
learned  Official  at  its  head,  Bartel  Bodegem,  contributed 
to  Binsfeld's  book  an  introductory  poem,  in  which  he  too 
attacks  such  judicial  heresies.' 

Moreover,  these  views  coincide  wholly  with  what  little 
we  know  of  Flade's  opinions.  There  is  nothing  in  his  trial 
to  suggest  that  he  doubted  the  existence  of  witches  ;  but  we 
have  seen  how  he  repeatedly  tried  to  meet  the  accusations 
against  him  by  urging  that  the  Devil  must  have  assumed 
his  person.  Hardly  could  the  torture  itself  drive  him  from 
this  position  ;  and,  when  forced  to  confess  against  others, 
he  over  and  over  again  qualified  his  accusation  by  adding : 
"  But  whether  it  was  himself  in  person  or  only  the  Evil  One 
in  his  form  I  cannot  say."  And  it  could  hardly  have  been 
mere  selfish  cowardice,  when,  on  the  morning  after  his  first 
taste  of  the  torture,  Johann  Zandt  and  Dr.  Hultzbach  asked 
him  what  conclusion  he  had  reached  during  the  night,  he 
replied :  "  This  evil  is  not  to  be  helped  by  severity ;  but 
through  penitence,  sorrow,  and  penance  many  might  be 
won  back,  if  only  mercy  were  shown  them."  *  Therefore, 
whether  it  were  the  stout  obstinacy  of  Greth  Braun  at  the 
beginning  of  his  dealings  with  witches,  or  only  his  own 
costly  experience  at  the  end,  that  suggested  them,  it  seems 
tolerably  clear  that  before  his  death  Dietrich  Flade  held  the 
opinions  which  Peter  Binsfeld  fought ;  and  the  phrase  in 
which  we  have  heard  the  Jesuit  witness  of  his  death  describe 

just  such  crimes,  he  could  yet  help  condemn  others  to  death,  he  could  only  reply 
that  not  he,  but  the  Assessors,  pronounced  the  sentence,  and  that  he  only  con- 
firmed it  by  breaking  the  staff.  ("  Weill  er  sich  in  diesen  unnd  dergleichen 
stucken  selbst  schuldigh  gewust,  wie  er  dan  andere  zum  thodt  verurtheilen  helffen 
kunnen  ?  Sagt  er  hab  kein  urtheill  gesprochen,  sender  die  Scheffen,  unnd  er 
hab  allein  die  urtheill  mit  brechungh  dess  stabs  confinnirt. "   (Flade  trial,  p.  223.) 

'  Bartholomaeus  von  Bodeghem  (as  he  wrote  his  own  name)  was  Official  at 
Trier  from  1578  to  1608.  He  was  a  native  of  Delft,  and  was  a  correspondent 
of  both  the  elder  and  the  younger  Grotius.  His  rich  collection  of  books,  be- 
queathed to  the  Jesuits,  is  now  a  part  of  the  City  Library  at  Trier,  and  its  vol- 
umes on  witchcraft  attest  his  interest  in  that  subject.  Is  it  significant,  however, 
that  his  verses  were  not  reprinted  by  Binsfeld  in  subsequent  editions,  a  fresh 
Carmen  contra  maUficos  by  one  "A.  v.  Bruele,  S.  Th.  D.,"  being  substituted  ? 

'  Flade  trial,  p.  195. 


50  George  L.  Burrs  Paper.  [235 

his   relation   to   the   court   which   condemned   him   points 
strongly  to  the  earlier  date. 

Nor  is  it  inconsistent  with  this  that  those  who  later  wrote 
against  the  persecution  say  nothing  of  his  views ;  for  by  his 
confession  he  had  become  the  best  argument  of  their  oppo- 
nents. So  when,  a  year  or  two  after  Flade's  death,  there  came 
to  the  University  of  Trier  the  fiery  Dutch  professor,  Cornelius 
Loos,  who,  led  by  Weyer's  reasoning  into  a  more  thorough- 
going skepticism,  dared  to  write  a  book  in  reply  to  Binsfeld, 
it  was  only  the  dark  allusions  inserted  by  the  latter,  in  the 
second  edition  of  his  work,  to  the  confession  of  a  learned 
man,  by  which  the  witch-sabbath  was  proved  no  dream  of 
deluded  old  women  merely,  that  drove  him  to  mention 
Flade  at  all.'  And  the  canon.  Linden,  who,  though  an  eye- 
witness, must  have  been  but  a  youth,  and  not  till  a  quarter- 
century  later  wrote  that  scathing  account  of  the  persecution 
at  Trier  by  which  it  is  chiefly  known  to  history,  may  well 
have  forgotten,  if  he  ever  knew,  the  hesitation  of  the  judge 
whom  he  is  content  with  enumerating  among  its  victims.* 

'  I  know,  cries  Loos  (in  his  De  vera  et  falsa  magia,  lib.  i.,  cap.  39),  whom 
you  mean  by  the  "  viri  docti,"  whose  confession  of  witchcraft  you  urge. 
"  Quantum  hie  conjectura  consequi  licet,  scio  et  mecum  uni  plurimi,  quisnam 
doctor,  et  quinam  alii  sunt :  si  ab  eruditione  commendati,  non  jam  qusero. 
Veriim  ut  una  hirundo  (sicut  in  proverbio  est)  non  facit  ver  ;  nee  unus  et  alter 
forte  insulsus  et  infatuatus  doctor  .  .  .  fidem  in  re  ardua  nequaquam  faciunt. 
.  .  .  Ut  mod6  non  discutiatur,  ne  parum  hie  instrucli  mox  offendantur,  turn 
prudentes  et  rem  praesentem  hanc  intelligentes,  invisa  proUxitate  graventur ; 
num  illi,  quorum  tacitis  nominibus  ingeritur  mentio,  delati  citius  de  magise 
crimine  fuerint,  qucim  ver6  convicti  :  tum  calumniis  constemati,  et  ignominia 
turbati,  ad  hsec  quaestioni  liberis  personis,  tum  eruditione  et  dignitate  conspi- 
cuis  indigne  subjecti :  et  poenis  tum  contumeliosis,  tum  acerbis  divexati, 
extortum  potius  emiserint  confessionem,  qu^m  veram  dederint :  ut  infelicr 
vitae  misera  morte  semel  finem  facerent."  He  promises,  indeed,  that  "  de  hac 
in  sequentibus,  prout  institutum  foret,  fusius  dicetur."  But  these  later  pages 
were  perhaps  never  written.  Only  a  few  sheets  of  his  book  had  been  printed 
when  it  was  seized  by  the  ecclesiastical  authorities,  and  for  centuries  it  was 
thought  lost,  until,  in  1886,  it  was  my  good  fortune  to  find  the  manuscript  of 
the  first  two  of  its  four  books  on  the  shelves  of  the  Stadt-Bibliothek  at  Trier. 
Since  then,  so  much  of  it  as  had  been  printed  has  been  unearthed  at  the 
library  of  Coin. 

'This  cardinal  passage  may  be  found  in  Hontheim,  Hist.  Trev.  Dip!.,  iii. 
(p.  170,  note),  and  in  the  Gesta  Trev.,  ed.  Wyttenbach  and  Mliller  ;  but 
neither  of  these  follows  with  absolute  accuracy  Linden's  aut(^raph  (codex  1359 


237]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  51 

But  had  Dr.  Flade's  opinions  aught  to  do  with  his  fate  ? 
We  may  never  know.  Whatever  their  remoter  share  in  it, 
few  modem  students  of  the  story,  I  think,  will  doubt  that  its 
chief  agent  was  the  Freiherr  Zandt  von  Merl.  But  there  are 
many  ways  in  which  the  Judge  may  have  stood  in  the  way 
of  the  Governor,  Johann  Zandt  was,  it  is  true— as  might  be 
much  more  fully  shown — one  of  the  most  zealous  of  witch- 
persecutors,  and,  it  is  to  be  feared,  not  one  of  the  most 
disinterested.  There  is  abundant  reason  to  suspect  him  of 
impatience  of  the  city's  slowness  to  share  the  panic*  Be- 
yond that,  all  is  conjecture. 

of  the  Trier  Stadt-Bibliothek),  and  I  therefore  transcribe  it  here  with  care  from 
the  manuscript : 

"  Quia  vulgo  creditum,  multorum  annorum  continuatam  sterilitatem  i  strigi- 
bus  et  maleficis  diabolical  invidia  causari  ;  tola  patria  in  extinctionem  malefica- 
nim  insurrexit,  Hunc  motum  juvabant  multi  oiBciati  ex  hujusmodi  cineribus 
aurum  et  divitias  sperantes.  Unde  tota  Diocesi  in  oppidis  et  villis  per  Tri- 
bunalia  currebant  selecti  accusatores,  Inquisitores,  Apparitores,  Scabini, 
Judices,  Lictores,  qui  homines  utriusque  sexns  trahebant  in  causam  et  quaes- 
tiones,  ac  magno  numero  exurebant.  Vix  aliquis  eorum  qui  accusati  sunt, 
supplicium  evasit.  Nee  parcitum  fuit  Magnatibus  in  urbe  Trevirensi.  Nam 
Praetor  cum  duobus  Consulibus,  Senatoribus  aliquot  et  Scabinis  incinerati  sunt. 
Canonici  diversorum  CoUegiorum,  Parochi,  Decani  rurales  in  eadem  fu^re 
damnatione.  Tandem  eousque  furentis  populi  [et]  Judicnm  insania  proces- 
serat  sanguinem  et  praedam  sitientium,  ut  vix  inventus  fuerit,  qui  non  aliqul 
huius  sceleris  maculd  notaretur.  Interim  Notarii,  Actuarii  et  Caupones 
ditescebant.  Camifex  generoso  equo  instar  aulici  nobilis  ferebatur,  auro, 
argentoque  vestitus  :  uxor  ejus  vestium  luxu  certabat  cum  Nobilioribus.  Sup- 
plicio  affectorum  liberi  exulabant ;  bona  publicabantur :  deficiebat  Arator  et 
Vinitor,  hinc  sterilitas.  Vix  putatur  saevior  pestis  aut  atrocior  hostis  pera- 
grasse  Trevirensium  fines,  quam  hie  immodicae  inquisitionis  et  persecutionis 
modus :  plurima  apparebant  argumenta  non  omnes  fuisse  noxios.  Dnrabat 
haec  persecutio  complures  annos ;  et  nonnulli  qui  Justitiae  praeerant,  gloria- 
bantur  in  pluralitate  paloram,  ad  quorum  singulos,  singula  humana  corpora 
Vulcano  tradita. 

"  Tandem  cum  haec  sentina  assiduo  Vulcano  non  exhauriretur ;  depauperaren- 
tur  antem  subditi ;  leges  inquisitionibus  et  Inquisitoribus  eorumque  quaestui  ct 
sumptibus  latae  et  exercitae  sunt ;  subitoque  sicut  in  bello,  deficiente  pecuniae 
nervo,  cessavit  impetus  Inquirentium.  Observatum  fuit  paucos,  opes  ex  hac 
laniena  corrasas  ad  tertios  haeredes  transtulisse." 

The  verses  hereto  added  by  Wyttenbach  are  not  in  Linden's  MS.  In  1599 
Linden  was  already  canon  of  St.  Simeon  and  J.  U.  D.  His  chronicle  breaks 
off  at  1626  ;  but  he  was  still  living  in  1637,  and  is  said  to  have  died  in  1639. 

•  Nobody  who  has  read  Linden's  words  will  count  it  rash  to  suspect  him  of 
avarice.     His  victims  were  largely  rich  men.     In  1591  the  Elector  himself  was 


52  George  L,  Burr's  Paper.  [238 

Had  he  accomplices  ?  Were  the  Jesuits  his  allies  ?  Were 
they  his  tools,  or  was  he  theirs  ?  The  ablest  of  the  historians 
of  witchcraft  has  charged  their  order  with  using  the  witch- 
persecution  as  a  cloak  for  the  punishment  of  heresy  and 
seeking  to  burn  as  witches  those  whom  under  the  law  of  the 
Empire  they  could  no  longer  burn  as  heretics  ;  and  he  bases 
this  charge  largely  on  the  history  of  the  persecution  at  Trier.' 
After  a  careful  study  of  the  documents  left  us,  I  find  as  yet 
no  reason  to  share  his  view.  The  heretics  were  indeed  not 
yet  rooted  out  at  Trier.  Persecution  for  heresy  went  on 
side  by  side  with  persecution  for  witchcraft.'  It  would 
have  been  strange,  in  sooth,  if  the  two  Satanic  crimes  were 
never  associated  in  fervid  minds ;  nor  could  one  wonder  if 
those  who  severed  themselves  religiously  from  the  sym- 
pathy of  their  neighbors  had  been  most  easily  suspected  of 
so  unnatural  a  sin  as  witchcraft.'  Heresy  could  surely  not 
be  expected  to  mitigate  the  severity  of  their  judges.  But 
that  this  suspicion  was  actually  felt,  or  that  the  Jesuits  ever 
consciously  confused  the  two  crimes,  I  find  scant  evidence.* 

forced  to  limit  by  an  edict  the  exorbitant  costs  of  the  trials.  In  1595  a  St. 
Maximin  witch,  Meyers  Crist  of  Riol,  testified  that,  though  she  knew  she  had 
been  accused  of  witchcraft,  she  took  no  steps  to  clear  herself,  because  "sie 
sehe  woll  wie  es  geschaffen,  dan  die  Hern  brennen  allein  die  Reichen,  und 
drachten  dem  gut  allein  nach  "  (see  her  trial,  in  Trier  Stadt-Bibliothek).  Could 
fear  have  had  its  share,  too,  with  Johann  Zandt  ?  In  1591  he  told  Nicolas 
Fiedler  he  would  gladly  have  spared  him,  but  for  the  common  cry  from  every- 
where outside  the  city  that  *'  Ich,  Schultheiss  unnd  Scheffen  woUen  keine  ge- 
rechttigkeitt  administriem,  mit  Ahmhudung  [Anmuthung]  wir  seien  solichen 
verdamblichen  lasters  villicht  auch  schuldig,"  wherefore  they  "  habenn  darumb 
krafft  unserer  eidt  unnd  pfligt,  Auch  unsere  Personen  zu  entschuldigen,  denn 
Anfang  mit  euch  unnd  andern  denuntiirten  Personen  ipachen  muessen." 

'  Soldan,  Geschichte  der  Hexenprocesse  (Stuttgart,  1843),  pp.  358-361  ;  and 
neu  bearbeitet  von  H.  Heppe  (Stuttgart,  1880),  ii.,  pp.  33-37. 

*  The  Jesuit  letters  are  full  of  it.  In  1588,  we  are  told,  sixty  persons 
at  Trier  abjured  their  heresy.  Not  until  1596  do  we  read  that  "  non  fere  ulli 
sunt  hac  infecta  labe  in  hac  Urbe." 

*  Thus  in  Protestant  lands,  as  at  Paderbom,  the  Jesuits  were  themselves 
suspected  of  complicity  with  the  Devil  and  of  the  use  of  witchcraft. 

*  The  darkest  fact  is  their  constantly  harboring  the  boy-informers  ;  for,  alas, 
the  instances  we  have  met  were  by  no  means  the  only  ones.  Again  and  again 
we  hear  of  it  ;  and  even  so  late  as  1599  we  learn  from  them  how  a  "  puer 
annorum  trium  et  decem.  veneficiis  ad  noctuma  nefandaque  consortia  traduce- 


•239]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  53 

There  is  no  savor  of  heresy  in  the  witch-confessions  left  to 
us,  though  every  effort  was  made  to  trace  witchcraft  to 
Protestantism,  and  though  all  the  older  witches  were  made 
to  confess  that  it  came  into  the  Electorate  with  the  raid  of 
Albert  of  Brandenburg,  in  1552.  The  Devil  at  Trier  was, 
in  truth,  a  very  orthodox  Devil,  who  always  spoke  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  as  "  the  Bride,"  and  insisted  on  his  servants 
renouncing  the  Saints  as  well  as  the  Godhead,  and  on  their 
treating  the  sacrament  as  the  veritable  body  of  Christ. 
Nay,  we  read,  in  the  letter  of  the  Trier  Jesuits  for  1588, 
that  "  of  all  the  nets  of  Satan  which  he  devotes  himself  to 
weaving  for  the  ruin  of  good  people,  this  is  perhaps  the 
most  notable  that  those  whom  he  can  nowise  seduce  from 
the  pure  fount  of  the  Roman  faith  by  the  teachings  of 
heretics  "  he  leads  into  witchcraft.* 

At  all  events,  Dietrich  Flade  was  no  Protestant.  He 
confessed,'  indeed,  that  he  had  harbored  religious  doubts, 
and  even  ascribed  to  them  his  fall  into  the  power  of  Satan ; 
but  the  one  doubt  he  named — a  questioning  of  the  need  of 
the  sacrifice  of  Christ  for  man's  salvation — was  not  one 
of  those  that  divided  the  warring  faiths.  All  his  life  he 
had  been  a  leader  of  the  Catholic  party;  and  his  most 
devoted  friend  till  death  was  apparently  his  Jesuit  con- 
fessor, Father  Ellentz.  And  if  it  seems  strange  that  men  so 
subtle  as  the  Jesuit  fathers  could  be  played  upon  by  the 
boy-accomplices  of  Johann  Zandt,  one  must  remember  that 
a  Justus  Lipsius  was  even  then  standing  sponsor  to  the 
witch-code  of  a  Delrio.  Such  men  had  once  for  all  turned 
their  backs  on  the  protests  of  the  carnal  reason. 

batur,  coepit  inde  personas  et  scelera  detegere,"  and  how  they  saved  him  from 
the  molestations  of  Satan.  That  the  Jesuits  were  the  most  ardent  promoters 
of  both  persecutions  goes  without  saying.  They  boasted  that  they  had  almost 
a  monopoly  of  the  spiritual  care  of  the  witches.  That  they  had  great  power  of 
Kfe  and  death  is  clear  from  their  stories  of  those  spared  at  their  request. 

'  In  1591  Johann  Zandt  complained  to  his  colleagues  of  the  court  that  *'  dass 
laster  der  Zauberey  dermassen  weit  eingerissen,  dass  bait  die  frombsten,  und 
so  man  darvur  gehalten,  darmit  besodelt  gefonden  werden."  Binsfeld  ex- 
pressly names  excessive  piety  as  a  ground  for  suspicion  of  witchcraft. 

*  Flade  trial,  pp.  193,  194. 


54  George  L.  Burrs  Paper,  [240 

Nor  is  it  hard  to  see  by  what  means  the  Governor  won 
their  hearts.  In  their  letter  for  1588  we  read,  in  touching 
detail,  how  "  the  man  foremost  at  Trier  in  authority,  wealth, 
and  station,  a  man  companionable  and  affable  to  all,"  falling 
into  conversation  with  a  woman  of  low  degree,  was  suddenly 
bewitched  by  her  with  such  an  illness  that  no  remedies  could 
put  him  out  of  his  pain  till  some  of  the  fathers  came  to  his 
relief  with  masses,  prayers,  and  sacred  music  ;  how  this  man, 
because,  as  his  high  office  required,  he  was  wont  to  enforce 
the  laws  severely  against  these  wicked  crones,  was  often 
thus  assailed  with  witchcraft ;  and  how,  when  once  a  peasant 
woman  offered  him  some  eggs,  and  the  boy  who  was  with 
him  had  taken  them  in  his  cap,  the  eggs  were  no  sooner 
emptied  out  and  the  cap  put  back  on  the  boy's  head  than 
the  lad  was  seized  with  a  frenzy  of  pain,  which  was  only 
stilled  by  his  rushing  to  the  nearest  church  and  plunging  his 
head  into  the  holy-water  font.  The  woman,  of  course,  was 
tortured  into  confession,  and  explained  how  she  had  pre- 
pared the  eggs  for  the  destruction  of  the  great  man.  And 
in  the  Jesuit  letter  for  1589,  in  the  same  breath  in  which 
they  tell  us  of  the  death  of  Flade  and  his  fellows,  they  add 
with  joy  that  at  a  public  dinner  the  Governor  "  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  say  that  he  would  be  unwilling  to  fill  so  troublesome 
and  dangerous  an  office,  were  he  not  so  greatly  helped  by 
our  devotion  in  preparing  the  souls  of  the  witches  to  meet 
death  bravely."  What  wonder  that  a  man  who  knew  so 
well  how  to  use  the  superstition  and  the  vanity  of  his 
fellows  should  have  prospered  in  his  crimes  as  in  his  am- 
bitions? ' 

But,  if  to  Johann  Zandt  belongs  the  largest  share  in  the 
fate  of  Dietrich  Flade,  one  only  less  great  belongs  to  His 
Electoral  Grace,  Johann  VII.  of  Trier.     Who  may  have 

'  Binsfeld,  too,  was  a  dupe  of  Johann  Zandt ;  to  him  he  owed  that  remarka- 
ble story  of  the  power  of  consecrated  church-bells  over  the  witches — an  indirect 
result  of  which,  perhaps,  was  the  custom,  kept  up  at  Trier  for  centuries,  of 
ringing  the  city  church-bells  all  night  throughout  the  month  of  May.  In  1599 
Zandt  had  left  the  Governorship  for  the  higher  post  of  Landhofmeisler  ;  and 
in  1 61 1,  when  the  worthy  chronicler,  Johann  Mechtel,  had  the  honor  of  sitting 
next  him  at  dinner,  he  was  still  thriving  in  that  office. 


24 1  ]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade,  55 

stood  beside  or  behind  him  in  his  action  we  can  but  guess ; 
a  certain  querulousness  and  a  sovereign  contempt  of  exac- 
titude in  his  rescripts  savor  of  his  unaided  hand.  Nor  may 
we  know  whether  he  was  most  moved  by  personal  fear  or 
by  superstitious  zeal,  or  perchance  by  something  more  than 
these.  The  sincerity  of  his  belief  in  witchcraft  it  is  hard  to 
doubt ;  and  touching  is  the  firmness  of  his  conviction  that 
whatever  is  said  after  priestly  absolution,  at  the  risk  of  their 
souls,  by  men  and  women  in  the  face  of  death  must  be  true. 
Nay,  even  in  those  later  and  to  our  eyes  far  more  damaging 
insinuations  against  Flade's  purity  and  honor  as  a  magis- 
trate he  must  have  put  some  faith,  or  he  would  hardly  have 
chosen  to  lay  them  before  that  jurist's  academic  colleagues. 
Yet  there  is  much  beside  their  evident  malice  to  make  us 
hesitate  fully  to  credit  them.  The  non-reply  of  the  theo- 
logical faculty,  the  general  esteem  in  which  Dr.  Flade  stood, 
the  almost  eulogistic  words  of  the  Jesuit  Brouwer,  the  ab- 
sence of  such  charges  in  the  testimony  upon  his  trial,  and 
the  silence  of  opponents  like  Binsfeld  and  the  Jesuit  letter- 
writers,  who  could  have  pointed  with  his  fault  so  tempting 
a  moral,  not  to  mention  his  own  repeated  appeals  to  the 
faithfulness  of  his  official  service,  if  not  conclusive  of  his 
innocence,  ought  surely  to  outweigh  charges  so  suspiciously 
partisan.  Not  even  in  the  torture  did  he  confess  to  any 
lapse  from  honesty  ;  and  not  legend  itself,  though  it  ascribed 
his  wealth  to  diabolic  aid,  ever  dreamed  it  gained  by  dia- 
bolic methods.  That  the  old  Judge  loved  money  may  well 
have  been  true ;  but  the  love  of  money  could  hardly  have 
been  criminal  which  refused  to  make  use  of  the  means  by 
which  his  fellow-magistrates  were  everywhere  enriching 
themselves — the  persecution  of  witches.  It  was  of  this  per- 
secution in  the  district  of  Trier  that  Linden  wrote : 
"  Notaries,  copyists,  and  innkeepers  grew  rich.  The  execu- 
tioner rode  on  a  blooded  horse,  like  a  courtier,  clad  in  gold 
and  silver ;  his  wife  vied  with  noble  dames  in  the  richness 
of  her  array."  "  Not,"  he  adds,  "  till  suddenly,  as  in  war, 
the  money  gave  out,  did  the  zeal  of  the  inquisitors  flag." 
Two  years  after  Flade's  death,  Johann  VII.  himself  had  to 


56  George  L.  Burr's  Paper,  [242 

interpose  with  an  edict  to  check  the  impoverishment  of  his 
subjects  by  the  witch-hunters.* 

Nay,  the  Elector  himself  has  not  wholly  escaped  the  sus- 
picion of  avarice.  May  not  the  wealth  of  Flade  have  played 
another  part  in  hastening  his  fate  ?  Confiscation  of  the 
property  of  witches  was  not  usual  at  Trier  * ;  but  there  is 
still  extant  a  letter  of  the  Elector's,*  wherein  he  informs  the 
civic  authorities  of  Trier  that,  "  inasmuch  as  we  find  among 
Dr.  Dietrich  Flade's  property  a  note  specifying  four  thou- 
sand gulden  in  gold  as  in  the  keeping  of  the  city  of  Trier, 
the  disposition  of  which  for  peculiar  reasons,  as  you  perhaps 
may  know,  belongs  to  us,"  therefore  the  sum  maybe  divided 
among  the  parish-churches  of  the  city.  Now,  this  was  but 
a  small  part  of  his  wealth  ;  for  there  also  remains  an  inven- 
tory of  his  property,  taken  in  1590  by  the  town-clerk  of 
Trier,  which  shows  it  to  have  been  vast.*     Is  it  possible, 

*  It  may  be  found  in  Hontheim,  Hist.  Trev.  Dipl.,  iii.  The  original  is 
still  at  Trier  (codex  2529  of  the  Stadt-Bibliothek). 

'  Brouwer  expressly  commends  the  Elector  because  "  k  damnatorum  bonis, 
quod  legibus  poterat,  nihil  sibi  fiscus  vindicaret."  By  the  charter  of  1580  were 
relinquished,  out  of  special  grace,  to  the  citizens  of  Trier,  all  confiscations, 
"  ausserhalb  denselben,  so  in  Kayserlichen  rechten  ausstrucklich  begrieffen 
sind"  ;  and  Binsfeld  repeatedly  tells  us  (as  on  p.  23  of  the  ed.  of  1589)  that 
witches  were  thus  exempt  from  confiscation,  complaining  in  the  same  breath 
that  "  quidam  judices  cum  ex  confiscatione  bonorum  nihil  habere  possint,  sub 
aliis  coloribus  vel  expensanim,  vel  vacantiarum  aut  laborum,  in  rei  veritatem, 
quod  abominandum  est,  et  contra  justitiam  et  sequitatem,  ita  confiscant  Reorum 
bona,  ut  pupilli  et  viduae  non  rar6  ad  summam  necessitatem  redigantur."  In 
1 591  Nicolas  Fiedler  did  bequeath  his  property,  as  is  clear  from  the  records  of 
his  trial.  The  words  of  Linden,  which  have  misled  Soldan  and  others,  there- 
fore apply,  I  think,  only  to  those  who  were  banished.  But  in  Flade's  case 
the  same  misunderstanding  of  his  letter  which  we  have  noted  above  (p. 
37)  may  have  served  the  Elector  as  a  pretext  for  confiscation.  Dr.  Kraus, 
I  know  not  on  what  authority,  says  that  his  house  at  Pfalzel  was  confiscated. 

'Of  March  4,  1591.  The  original,  signed  by  Johann's  own  hand,  is  in  codex 
1618.  g.  of  the  Trier  Stadt-Bibliothek,  and  a  copy  of  it  in  codex  1502  of  the 
same  library.     The  "  Flade-Stif tung  "  so  created  still  flourishes  at  Trier. 

*  This  inventory,  cited  by  Wyttenbach  and  Miiller  in  their  notes  to  the  Gesta 
Trev.,  I  have  not  been  able  to  find.  They  give  as  its  title  :  "  General-Inven- 
tarium  aller  GUter,  so  dem  Ehrenvesten  und  Hochgelehrten  Herrn  Diederichen 
Flade  Doctor,  Schultheissen  zu  Trier  selbigen  zugestanden,  welche  in  seinem 
Hause  theils,  und  im  Rathhause  zu  unterschiedlichen  Tagen  und  Zeiten  inven- 
taryrt  worden."     It  is  doubtless  that  of  p.  38,  note  2,  above. 


243]  The  Fate  of  Dietrich  Flade.  57 

then,  that  it  was  his  riches  that  cost  him  reputation  and 
h7e  ?  What  profit,  beyond  his  fees  on  the  trial,  could  have 
been  hoped  by  Johann  Zandt  von  Merl,  it  is  vain  to  guess ; 
but,  if  any  still  suspect  the  Jesuits,  it  will  be  remembered 
that  on  them,  above  all,  the  wealth  of  Johann  VII.  was 
lavished. 

Yet  a  kindlier  conjecture  offers  itself.  "  A  wealthy  per- 
son," says  the  letter  of  the  Trier  Jesuits  for  1589,  "  absolved 
by  priests  of  our  order  from  the  crimes  of  a  whole  life,'  left 
by  will  a  sum  of  many  thousands  in  gold  for  the  reHef  of 
the  poverty  of  needy  burghers,  monks,  and  priests,  founding 
what  is  called  a  mons  pietatis."  *  And  it  must  be  added  that 
his  own  mention  of  his  "  inheritance  "  on  the  morning  of 
his  death  lends  something  to  the  likelihood  of  this  solution.* 
May  not  the  Elector  have  been  only  the  administrator  of 
his  estate  ? 

It  is,  then,  still  possible  that,  as  most  scholars  have  be- 
lieved, Dietrich  Flade  owed  his  death  chiefly,  if  indirectly, 
to  his  hesitancy  in  the  persecution  of  witches. 

Perhaps  I  have  lingered  too  long  over  the  story  of  a  man 
whom  the  world  has  seemed  willing  to  forget.  Dietrich 
Flade  was  not  a  martyr — ^scarcely  even  a  hero.  Little  as  we 
know  of  him,  it  is  clear  that  he  died  for  something  less  than 
a  principle,  and  flinched  at  last  before  the  end  came.  Yet 
it  is  something  to  know  that,  even  in  that  most  drearily 
doctrinaire  of  ages,  there  lived  plodding  men  of  affairs,  who, 
spite  of  dogma  and  of  panic,  clung  to  their  common-sense 
and  their  humanity,  and  with  such  firmness  as  was  in  them 
breasted  the  fate  that  came. 

'  "  Homo  copiosus  totius  vitae  criminibus  absolutus,  opera  nostrorum." 

*  One  of  those  establishments  for  loaning  money  to  the  poor,  better  known 

to  us  by  their  French  name  of  monts-de-pi^i/. 

^  He  not  only  speaks  of  his  "  hereditat,"  but  directs  the  payment  of  his 

debts  and  of  certain  gifts,  and  that  * '  wo  sichs  findt,  dass  ich  etwas  unordent- 

lichs  oder  woecherlichs  uffgehaben  und  empfangen,  soil  wiederumb  gegeben 

werden." 


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